KAL Services: From the Beginning

For almost 30 years, KAL Services and its Midwest divisions have taken great "Pride in Service,"

Lyle and Kathy's first garbage truck.

specializing in residential, commercial, and industrial services, roll-offs, packer containers, and port-o-lets.

The Midwest services our customers know and value today began in 1981, when Lyle and Kathy Vander Meiden, owners of KAL Services, purchased Midwest Sanitation Service. At that time, the business consisted of four employees and two sanitation trucks.

Since then, Lyle and Kathy's sons, Aaron and Bryan, have come on board, and KAL Services, including Midwest Sanitation and now Recycle Midwest, has grown to a company with over 30 employees and 20 trucks for various purposes. Aaron and Bryan bring to the company new ideas and a vast knowledge of the industry, making them a vital part of the Midwest team.

Today, KAL Services and its divisions pride themselves on being a full-service waste and recycling company that specializes in helping individuals, corporations, and municipalities manage their waste and recycling programs. The company focuses on offering services that meet the needs of its customers and their communities.

Through the years, Midwest has expanded and diversified. In 1990, Lyle and Kathy foresaw a growth in the need for environmentally friendly services. They added to their business by starting Recycle Midwest. Recycle Midwest services now include two recycling centers located in Pella and Oskaloosa.

KAL Service's new recycling center in Oskaloosa.

Recycle Midwest's Oskaloosa Recycling Center, completed in 2008, meets the growing demands for recycling in Oskaloosa, Knoxville, Pella, and all of the surrounding communities. The state-of-the-art recycling center is a 17,000 square-foot building capable of diverting 300 tons of material from local landfills every month.

Several features make the center "green." The main piece of equipment is a paper-fiber baler capable of processing three tons of material an hour, tripling the amount of material Recycle Midwest can process. The purchase of this baler was made possible with a grant from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. Other features include a plastic sorting and processing area and a certified-for-trade scale.

Click here to learn more about recycling through Recycle Midwest.