Recycler hopes his daily grind yields bumper crops.

Getting a loan to study how to turn wallboard into fertilizer wasn't too tough for Union County's Steve Davis. Getting a state permit to actually do it proved to be the hard part. "When I first went to the state, they shunned me," Davis says.

Sure, the plan might keep thousands of tons of trash out of nearby landfills -- something the state has been pushing counties to do since the early '90s. But past private recyclers have scooped up junk, then closed, leaving the state a mess.

Davis, 44, admits that he wasn't out to cure society's woes so much as to improve his cash flow. He had been an independent trucker since graduating from Forest Hills High School in 1974 but decided to work closer to home after a car wreck hospitalized his wife for four months. He started Davis Construction Services in 1994 to help drywall contractors get rid of their trash. By 1999, the company was grossing $500,000 a year. His crews would haul the scrap to a landfill, which buried the wallboard and a big hunk of his profit. "You pay $128,000 to $150,000 a year to the landfill, that puts everything in gear," he says.

When he asked around about alternative uses for the wallboard, an agricultural extension agent told him the calcium sulfate in drywall was a key ingredient of some farm fertilizers. It strengthens plant cell walls.

Davis got more than $400,000 in...