Revolution is offering Arkansas farmers a more efficient way to schedule pickup of irrigation tubing and receive a rebate through a proprietary technology the company has developed.
The Push for Pick Up & Get Paid program is available to farmers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Missouri.
Arkansas growers are adopting the technology, which is available through an app that allows farmers to drop a pin that identifies the exact location for pickup of used polytube. The initiative is a more effective and efficient process, according to Trey Reaper, whose family operates a fourth-generation farm just outside Searcy.
“This new app has really been a game-changer in the efficiency and the ease of the entire process,” Reaper says. “Generating an app like this makes it easier for the grower just to interact with the company.
“Every grower is always looking for ways to make something more efficient because we’ve got a lot of moving parts,” he said. “I can be done with this in just a couple of clicks and they take care of all the rest.”
The Little Rock company developed the proprietary geolocation technology inhouse, according to Bret Dague, vice president of agriculture. “This was 100% created and developed by our employees,” he said.
Revolution collects the plastic tubing farmers use to irrigate fields and delivers it to the company’s main recycling operation in Stuttgart. The polytube is broken down for use to manufacture more tubing for next season’s crops.
The new pickup system replaces a hit-and-miss process that involved a fleet of trucks driving around to search for discarded pipe on farms. “There was quite a bit of guesswork,” Dague said, noting the app allows farmers to pinpoint the exact location of the tubing. “It allows us to create efficient routes and fit more round trips in a day. We can make pick-ups quicker.”
The process generates savings for the company and reduces its carbon footprint. “We can drive cost savings and to encourage participation we wanted to pass some of the savings we get back to the growers,” Dague said.
Revolution gives participating farmers a $10 credit for each full-sized polytube that is returned. The rebate is then used on the next purchase.
The Reapers farm about 1,700 acres of corn, soybean and hay and just a little more than half is irrigated with polytube. The rebate is nice, Reaper said, though the ease of scheduling pick-ups drives his participation.
“The financial aspect is probably more lucrative to larger row-crop growers with more acreage,” he said, “but anytime we can get a rebate and put it toward another purchase is a bonus. It’s really just the cherry on top with the app.”
Revolution manufactures plastic products — trash bags, irrigation tubing for farmers, carry-out bags for restaurants — and then collects those products after use, cleans them and breaks them down into resin pellets that can be used to manufacture the products all over again.