By Michael Bushnell
Northeast News
August 31, 2011

To hear Ron Yoder’s tale of how Go Green Recycling went south so quickly, it reveals how others were to blame for contractual obligations that weren’t fulfilled, causing him to default on rents due, miss tax payments to the state and have an ongoing dispute involving an easement with Kansas City Terminal Railway.

Court documents and angry landlords, however, tell a different story – a story laced with Go Green’s lies, bounced rent checks, pocketed tipping fees and rented equipment that was retrieved by the machinery company for lack of payment.

Last year, we profiled Yoder and his company, Go Green Recycling, a company that recycled roofing material and sold the ground-up material for reuse by area paving contractors. Yoder even received a citation from the mayor in June of 2010 for his operation of a green business. Something changed, however. Whether it was Yoder’s business model or sheer greed, the piles at Go Green Recycling quickly grew to the point where streetlight poles on his site were bent over from the exhausting weight of roofing material, and fences along the edge of the property bulged from mountains of wood waste piled, in some cases, over 50-feet high. That was before the grinder saw a single shingle.

When the grinding started, according to a security guard at Sheffield Industrial park, it belched a cloud of black smoke so high into the sky a city inspector diverted his car from nearby I-435 to investigate what he thought was a large fire.

Go Green, according to court documents, also had issues meeting monthly rent obligations to its landlord, Complete Real Estate. Another court case, filed by the Missouri Division of Employment Security, shows Go Green owing $762 in past due unemployment taxes. To compound Yoder’s problems, all of his rented heavy equipment was picked up by the rental company for lack of payment. Suddenly Ron Yoder, largely to his own doing, was up a roof-debris mountain without a ladder.

If Ron hadn’t been such a hothead and got belligerent, we probably could have worked something out, said Spencer Gregg of Complete Real Estate, Yoder’s landlord and owner of the property. This has been going on since last February. He just kept giving us excuses. He got run out of Arizona for basically the same thing.

It’s just a huge debacle.

That debacle played out in a courtroom last Friday morning when a Jackson County judge gave Yoder 90 days to clean the site up and vacate the premises in order to owe no back rent. If he does not comply, he will be in default and owe back rents of $4,500 per month for however long Go Green Recycling occupies the site.

I’m not optimistic, said Gregg. We’ve basically got this guy staying there rent-free until this mess is cleaned up.

When we spoke with Yoder last week about the matter, the conversation quickly turned hostile.

Don’t come around me again, don’t call me again or we’ll file a restraining order on you and sue you, Yoder said. Yoder then hung up on us.

Scott Carey of C.S. Carey Inc. in Kansas City, Kan., however, sees potential in Yoder’s misfortune. C.S. Carey specializes in land clearance and tree and debris removal.

We run a clean recycling yard in Topeka, Carey said. There’s enough good in his pile to make it worthwhile; we could make it go away and make a little money in the process.

But, he’s got a lot of trash in there that’s going to have to be dealt with.

The Go Green piles, according to Carey, could be worth more than $400,000 if it is sorted, cleaned and sold to the right buyer.

The trash in Go Green’s piles seems to be the fly in the ointment.

Someone’s going to have to take the hit on getting rid of the trash, said Carey.

Carey’s company was contacted by Yoder and did two days of clean-up at the Go Green site last week. Go Green, however, has a contract with a St. Joseph Missouri-based company with an enforceable non-compete clause.This clause forced C.S. Carey to cease their clean-up work.