One Business' Junk is Another Business' Treasure

I’m coming out of the closet! I am now, always have been and always will be a slave to the stinking rose. Everything I eat is laced liberally with garlic. Just the smell of garlic is enough to make me hungry. I have always maintained that garlic is a miracle food with many more uses than we put it to now.

While I would try a garlic slushy, I have to applaud the Des Moines suburb of Ankeny for their ingenuity in the use of garlic salt.

Necessity is truly the mother of invention. The Tone Brothers, a spice producer headquartered in Ankeny, had 18,000 pounds of garlic salt that was slated to hit the landfill. Ankeny had 400 miles of roads that needed to be de-iced.

Some environmental angel in Tone Brothers decided to donate the garlic salt to the city instead of clogging the landfill with all those bottles of spice. The bottles were opened (and I hope recycled) and the garlic salt was mixed with the regular road salt.

Other than a lovely aroma hanging about the suburb, it worked very well. However, there does seem to be an increase of people eating snow in Ankeny lately.

This brings up some interesting food for thought: How much other stuff is being sent to landfills by companies that with a little creativity could be put to use in another way? In this case, Tone Brothers got millions of dollars of free advertising from garlic salt they were ready to put in the landfill. The suburb of Ankeny got 18,000 lbs. of free garlic salt for their de-icing machines. The landfill did not receive 18,000 lbs. of garlic salt plus plastic bottles.