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Guy Crosby goes through lots of plastics on his farm in North Hartland, mostly sheets used to wrap up bales of hay. For years, he had to throw them into landfills because agricultural plastics are bulky and hard to clean, and few recycling centers take them.

So he started dreaming of a program that could make recycling them possible.

Crosby is not alone in this dream � 50 other farms under the Connecticut River Watershed Farmers Alliance have joined together to recycle agricultural plastics.

“There is a lot of farmers who feel the same way I do � they don’t like having to use plastic and, worse yet, having to put it in a landfill,� Crosby said. “The landfill operators don’t want to throw away plastics either.�

If the project succeeds, supporters hope it could clear the path for an expanded program allowing for recycling plastics from farms across Vermont, not just those along the border with New Hampshire.

Many beef and dairy farmers wrap up the hay they feed their cows. The plastic helps the feed ferment and turn into silage � which makes for a more digestible feed. During the winter season, when cows can’t graze, farmers provide their herd feed from bales. That creates a lot of plastic and with that a lot of waste.

“No one likes throwing stuff away, especially farmers,� said Michael Snow, the alliance’s executive director. About a year ago, the group started talking about creating a solution: a pilot system that collects plastic from area farms and makes it easier to recycle it.

“We collect the plastics into totes or fertilizer bags, and when they are ready, Guy goes and collects the bags,� Snow said.

Crosby distributes one-pound polyethylene bags to 50 farms in the alliance for them to collect their plastics. The farms must keep the bags dry and clean so the recycling center will accept them. Once the bags are full, Crosby collects them and brings them to a landfill in Lebanon, New Hampshire, where they are compacted down into a bale.

The goal of the program is to gather 40,000 pounds of material that will be split into 20 bales � of plastic, not hay � and shipped to a market in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. As of mid-March three bales had been created, and the team hopes to gather 17 more by June 2026.

In February, state officials gave the alliance a $20,000 grant from the Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets� Working Lands Program to fund the project. The grant is helping to pay for transporting the bale to Pennsylvania, Snow said.

This is not the first time state officials have backed a project to recycle agricultural plastics. In 2014, Casella Waste Systems, Cabot Creamery and Agri-Mark carried out a pilot program with the agency that saw plastics brought to five recycling locations across the state. The program was largely successful, with 8.5 tons of plastics recycled � though a portion wasn’t clean enough to be recycled and had to be thrown into a landfill.

Many problems come along with projects to recycle agricultural plastics, explained Annie MacMillan, a technical adviser with the U.S. Plastics Pact, a national campaign to make more plastics recyclable.

“The material has to be clean, and farms are historically places with lots of dirt and manure, so it's not an inherent thing,� said MacMillan, a former agrichemical toxicologist for the state who worked on the 2014 plastics project.

Plus, the plastic wrap on hay bales isn’t worth much as far as recyclables go, Crosby said. “So trying to collect it and recycle it is a costly endeavor,� he said, reflecting on the 2014 project.

It is also difficult to find a reliable market for the plastics, MacMillan said, because there’s so much flux in which places accept what material.

The team working on the current project is optimistic the project will work as a better model.

“Soon enough, all this Vermont plastic will be recycled and resourced into an industrial trash bag,� MacMillan said. “It’s pretty exciting.�

The Community News Service is a program in which University of Vermont students work with professional editors to provide content for local news outlets at no cost.