Waste Management landfill gives new life to Buckley Growers in Taylorville, Ill.

Throughout the spring months, trucks loaded down with trays of multicolored annuals travel from Buckley Growers in Taylorville, Ill., to the Busy Bee Nursery in Crestwood, Ill. Busy Bee, which is in its 20th year, hired Buckley because the grower offers varieties of flowers that general manager Peter Barones can't find anywhere else.

"We've always been happy with their service and product," said Barones, who has been a Buckley customer for five years. "We're comfortable with them because they run a good business."

What Barones never realized, however, was that just three years ago, Buckley had been on the brink of bankruptcy. Fuel costs had simply grown too expensive for the mid-sized greenhouse to handle.

During the 2005-2006 heating season, which runs from October through March, Buckley spent more than $340,000 on fuel, according to Director of Operations Doug Buckley. The cost of natural gas had skyrocketed and, lacking the necessary capital to grow the business, the grower was at an impasse.

"We began to look at options for ground west of Springfield," said Buckley, whose family has operated the greenhouse for five generations. "But once we put things down on paper about building a new facility in Springfield, it came down to the fuel costs being too much for us to bear and still pay the mortgage for a new facility."

Ultimately, the solution for Buckley lay east of Springfield in Taylorville, where trash services company Waste Management Inc. operates a 213-acre landfill. The Five Oaks disposal facility includes a landfill gas-to-energy plant that uses methane gas, released when trash decomposes, to generate power. Waste Management operates more than 70 similar plants across the country.

"We are rapidly increasing the amount of financial dollars we invest as a company into these kinds of facilities," said Waste Management spokesman Carl Niemann. "Right now our waste-to-energy and gas-to-energy plants produce enough power for over one million homes. One of our goals as a corporation is to reach enough power produced for two million homes by 2020."

When methane is processed through Waste Management's facility, the engines generate a large amount of heat that could be diverted to Buckley's neighboring greenhouse. Buckley and Waste Management came to an agreement that Waste Management would provide heat to Buckley at a discounted price.

Buckley broke ground at the new Taylorville location in late 2006, and operations began 10 months later. The new facility features modern labor- and heat-saving technologies, including a conveyor belt and temperature controls. Buckley estimates that these innovations and the reduction in fuel costs afforded by Waste Management will save the company 80 to 90 percent on heating.

Now that Buckley has been operating successfully at its new location for almost a year, the company is looking toward the future and has hopes of getting even bigger while still keeping costs low.

"We've got about 35 acres, of which we're using up about eight acres," Buckley said. "We can install a storage tank and we should be able to just about double our size right now with what is being provided to us by Waste Management, without increasing the amount of heat needed.