(upbeat music) (whistling) (whimsical music) - 732, 733, 734, (whistling) 7, um, 7, 7, um... (whistling) Eww.

This is really old.

(warping music) Oh, well, that was weird.

(whimsical music) Oh, yeah.

(whimsical music) That's good.

(whimsical music) - [Justin] Do you have these hallucinations often or... - Only.

Only when I'm working.

(whimsical music) (whistling) (upbeat music) Making a road out of plastic bags.

(upbeat music) Making a fleet of tap trucks from old vehicles.

(upbeat music) (guitar strum) Making new guitars out of old wood.

(upbeat music) What If!

(upbeat music) -[Mike] This building used to be a potato chip factory.

(upbeat music) Now it's home to a cool co-working space for artists and entrepreneurs.

A great place to be.

Part of our What If episode about new uses for old things.

Sometimes stuff that's been thrown away.

(upbeat music) Especially with an exhibit showcasing art made from recycled materials going on here.

(upbeat music) We'll tell you more about the building and show you that exhibit in just a little bit.

First, let's meet an entrepreneur who took old trucks and made them the life of the party.

(upbeat music) Every day is "take your family to work day" for Abby Miller.

Today it's Pat the Pickup at a UNL event.

Other times it's Dot or Inez.

We'll meet them later.

(guitar music) Put them all together and you have Abby's business Pat on Tap.

(gentle music) -[Abby] We're very similar to any other food catering business, except we only do things that are liquid, and then we have really cool.

Instead of five gallon igloo coolers, we have trucks.

-[Mike] Like Pat, a restored 1957 Chevy pickup.

(gentle music) -[Abby] Tonight, she'll serve 1500 drinks in less than three hours.

- Wow.

- The only other.

Yeah, the only other way you're gonna do that is if you're handing out cans.

And that's even if you have a really nice bartender.

I mean, there's no other experience quite like it where you could walk up to a truck you've never seen before with a drink maybe you've never had, or at least taste better because you think it does because it's coming from a cool truck.

(gentle music) - This one is really good.

-[Abby] That's just an experience unlike any other.

(gentle music) It is.

It's good.

- It's good.

- It's good.

(gentle music) (swoosh) (clunking) -[Mike] Abby's been starting businesses since she was a kid in a family of entrepreneurs.

(festive music) -[Abby] The first day I think I understood what entrepreneurship was, my best friend knocked on my front door and she said, "Hey, Abby, we're selling rocks."

And I said, "Who would buy the rocks?"

And she was like, "Well, here's our plan.

We're stealing them from their own yards, so they have to buy them back."

So I say that's how I learned supply and demand.

(laughing) My best friend getting me on this rock business, that was number one, kind of borderline on ethics.

- Did you sell rocks?

I think it was a one day venture.

(whimsical music) -[Mike] Other ventures were less sketchy, selling rabbits and duct tape wallets, lemonade stands, dog walking.

An interest in hospitality led to a photography business and a nonprofit recycling flower arrangements from large events to give out to people in hospitals or senior living.

(whimsical music) Abby did all this before graduating from high school.

(whimsical music) - All right, Mike, let's put you to work.

- All right.

Happy to help.

- All right, just spray wherever.

Please get it in one load.

-[Mike] All that background.

Plus, being a part of UNL's Engler Entrepreneurship program led to an idea by old vehicles and refurbish them to serve drinks at weddings, graduation parties, corporate events.

(gentle music) So with with Inez here, (gentle music) how long did it take you to build this?

(gentle music) - So it was a six month turnaround.

I think that would be like I did all of the kind of prep work like sanding.

I mean, it can take half an hour to get one bolt off.

(gentle music) You did it.

-[Mike] Okay.

Thank you.

- You could be hired.

- What do you pay?

- Um, that's to be discussed.

(laughing) Enough.

- Enough.

Okay.

Fair, fair.

(wooshing sound) -[Mike] Abby's more useful Pat on Tap, workers are all named for people important to her, including two grandmothers.

(gentle music) -[Abby] I think all three of those ladies are way tougher than me.

So I have a really hard day.

I'm like, you know what, Pat, Inez and Dot all could have got through this.

(upbeat music) -[Mike] Since Abby says each has its own personality.

We decided to let them tell us.

What's your name?

-[Voice of Truck] My name's Pat.

Pat the pickup.

- Is this hard work for somebody that's this old?

-[Voice of Truck] Well, first I would say wise.

And second, shouldn't you know this, Mike?

- Why are you called Dot?

-[Voice of Cushman] Well, my full name is Dorothy, but, uh, some people like to say I'm pretty dangerous on tap.

- Abby calls you rustic.

Do you agree with that?

-[Voice of Cushman] What's with the air quotes around rustic Mike?

- Abby seems to think you're the polished girl.

-[Voice of Cushman 2] Oh, that might be right, Mike, but I think I'm just a ray of sunshine.

- Isn't it super cool to be on What If?

-[Voice of Cushman 2] Oh, it's what I was made for, Mike.

I think it's cooler that you get to hang out with me.

- What's Abby like to work for?

-[Voice of Truck] Well, Mike, it'd be a lot better if I got a raise.

(electric music) (swoosh) (engine rumbling) (circus music) -[Mike] here's lots of long hours, hard work and troubleshooting running a business like this.

(circus music) This is a little more involved than just drive up and turn on the taps, huh?

-[Abby] Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

(circus music) -[Mike] Abby's goal is doing events 60 to 70 days a year.

It's lots of weekends, sometimes with trucks in different locations.

Dad sometimes helps with transportation, serving everything from beer and wine to hot apple cider and lemonade.

Mixing craft drinks herself.

(circus music) (soft music) - It's homecoming 2025 at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.

-[Mike] Hey look, it's D-Wayne from a different what if story.

- Mike will, Mike will rock you.

-[Mike] All right.

Back to Pat on Tap.

- Are you ready?

(marching band music) (gentle music) -[Mike] Abby Miller has big dreams.

(gentle music) Where's this business going to be in ten years?

- My number one goal is to be the ultimate beverage caterer in Nebraska.

I want it to be a household name.

I want people to say, hey, have you invited Pat yet?

Meaning the truck.

And everyone knows that means the truck, not your cousin Pat.

-[Mike] Getting there could include franchising with other budding entrepreneurs owning trucks led and coached by Abby.

- Thank you.

-[Abby] You posted, tag Pat on Tap.

- Okay.

(laughing) (gentle music) - Oh, cute.

(gentle music) -[Abby] My passions are seeing people happy.

And that is.

It sounds so simple, but we're on this earth for such a short time, so why can't we spend as many moments as we can, um, just living our lives happily?

(gentle music) - The event here is called Recycle Omaha.

It's all about creative uses of recycled, reused, or repurposed materials.

(gentle music) There's the work of dozens of artists, including clothing made by an indigenous fashion designer from unused wool put on the secondary market.

It also includes moose hair, (gentle music) a piece made from recycled bike tires and found objects.

(gentle music) A collage made from junk mail.

(gentle music) Sculpture made from trash the artist finds on Omaha's Blondo Street, (gentle music) and sculpture made from recycled Styrofoam taken from the roof of a house.

(gentle music) (cheering) Plus a fashion show with outfits also made from recycled materials and models entering through a curtain made from plastic bags.

(gentle music) Plastic bags in art and roads.

We visited South Sioux City to see that in person.

(crunching sounds) (gentle music) Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world, (gentle music) but there's nothing attractive about billions of single use plastic bags that are costly to our cities, agriculture and the environment.

Few would call this an American beauty.

(chime sound) (upbeat music) The folks in South Sioux City had an idea about a way to reuse some of those plastic bags, pave a road and trails incorporating a couple million of them shredded and melted into the asphalt.

(upbeat music) This half mile stretch of what used to be a gravel road is a project driven by a guy who's been around here for a while.

(upbeat music) How long have you been city administrator?

- 40.

40 some years.

(upbeat music) - People don't usually last that long in those positions, do they?

- A lot longer than normal.

(engine rumbling) -[Mike] Where did the idea for the road project come from?

-[Lance] We always try to learn from what other towns are doing, what other places are doing.

And we saw on the internet plastic roads being built in Europe and Sweden and, and Ghana and lots of different places and said, this makes sense.

And it fits the council's goal of being an environmentally friendly city.

(upbeat music) (insects chirping) (gentle music) -[Mike] It took a couple years of work to get to this point, aided by a Nebraska Environmental Trust grant and lots of partners from the Nebraska Department of Transportation, construction, recycling and other areas.

(gentle music) Baylor Bestgen kept everyone connected and the project moving forward.

(large vacuum sound) (upbeat music) When they first contacted you about doing this thing, what did you think?

- I'd be lying if I said I didn't have reservations.

(upbeat music) I think civil engineer is naturally a creature of comfort.

It seems like a big lift, but once you get smart people talking to each other and they have that same frequency, it becomes really easy.

(upbeat music) -[Mike] You wouldn't know it by looking at it, but the top three inches of asphalt includes the shredded plastic.

(upbeat music) When you first started floating this idea around, did you get any funny looks?

- When people thought about a plastic road that they didn't realize what we meant?

But, you know, plastic is a petroleum-based unit, so it makes sense to put it into asphalt.

(upbeat music) The key to making it all work was Jamilla Teixeira with the University of Nebraska.

She had the brains and the knowledge to make this thing happen.

(gentle music) (gentle music) (swoosh) (gentle music) (swoosh) (gentle music) -[Mike] Jamilla Teixeira was doing research in her lab on asphalt concrete things.

Roads are made from years before South Sioux City started their project.

I always think that infrastructure requires a lot of natural resource materials to construct roadways, but if we just use a natural resource, it is not.

I think it's not the ideal situation.

We have several different byproducts and ways that could be incorporated.

So waste plastic, it is just one of the potential materials that I saw.

That could be a good opportunity to start researching.

(gentle music) -[Mike] Materials like plastic grocery bags, but also water bottles, large bags for ag materials, even conveyor belts.

(gentle music) - Interesting.

And this works better in concrete.

That works better in asphalt.

- Each type of plastic that they have their own chemical, physical characteristics, shapes and they might be ideal for one applications or for the other.

Right now we're searching this one for concrete and those for asphalt.

(gentle music) -[Mike] We have the ingredients.

(gentle music) Time to cook.

(gentle music) - Ready to be the Matter Chef?

- I would love to be Matter Chef.

- Yes, Let's do it.

- I even get a coat.

- Yes, you'll get everything.

But don't forget safety first.

Here's your safety gloves.

(electronic music) (electronic music) (materials clanking) (electronic music) - Gotta stir the cake.

-Yep.

(laughs) -[Jamilla] It's a brownie.

(laughs) - It is a brownie.

(electronic music) (materials clunking) (electronic music) - Matter Chef.

(electronic music) (swoosh) - So we bake the cake.

That's how we say.

- Ok.

- And then we test to see if the cake is good enough to be placed on the roadways.

What if I apply the load here?

It's going to crack.

It's going to deform because those are the major issues on a pavement.

You can see cracks, you can see potholes, deformation, water can infiltrate.

We need to verify before applying.

- Right.

Nobody likes potholes.

- No nobody likes potholes.

(upbeat music) -[Mike] Samples are subjected to different performance tests.

One measures how likely it will crack.

(machine rumbling) -[Nitish] And we see that the cracking tolerance index is 106.1, which is pretty much good for our mixture.

(upbeat music) -[Mike] Another mimics traffic load, a wheel going back and forth showing resulting deformation.

(upbeat music) -[Jamilla] You can see here small deformation, large deformation.

Those are mixtures that we use on the South Sioux City.

Those had no plastic.

This has plastic.

You can clearly see.

-[Mike] Wow.

You can really see a difference.

So the plastic held up a lot better.

For the South Sioux City project, Jamilla and team tried about six different recipes before finding the right mix and visited plants that make road materials to learn the best way to incorporate plastics.

I would say took about almost two years.

-[Indiscernable] Said, "No.

I think this recipe might work."

And I'm still not saying with 100% assurance that this is going to last.

We still need to see long term performance.

I think the importance of this research is taking something that is just discarded out there and find a room, but in a proper way, because asphalt, pavements, pavements in general, they have a great history of incorporating waste materials.

But I always say is that we cannot think the pavement as a big trash can, that we can just dump things underneath.

It has to help.

On the performance of the roadway somehow otherwise was just hiding a problem.

(gentle music) (upbeat music) -[Rod] So today we are here to announce the first plastic recycled bag road in the state of Nebraska.

(upbeat music) But this is a story.

(upbeat music) It's an innovation.

It's something it's done a few spots around the world.

(upbeat music) (clapping and cheering) -[Mike] This short stretch of road is a point of pride for South Sioux City.

It's also a research project.

Can adding 2 million shredded plastic bags to the asphalt be cost efficient and make the road last longer?

(upbeat music) -[Jamilla] So we were able to build the roadway.

That actual road is going to be subjected to our harsh environmental conditions, low temperature, winter conditions, high temperatures, summer.

We can see if the plastic helps on the adhesion.

That's going to promote less susceptibility to moisture damage to low temperature cracking, which is one of our issues in Nebraska.

(soft upbeat music) (engines rumbling) - Well, I think the road is going to demonstrate one, that it will last longer based on all the other studies we've seen.

Number two, it's more flexible.

(upbeat music) Number three, it should cost less.

Once you set up a system of construction companies working on this.

It should cost less.

(gentle music) -[Mike] Foundry road is a good place for the test because it's in a high traffic park and leads to a construction site that gets heavy truck traffic.

(gentle music) All involved will be watching how the road holds up for the next few years, with an eye on more projects like this.

(gentle music) Do you think this can take off in ten years?

- I think so.

I think so.

- Plastic bag roads everywhere.

- Imagine.

Imagine.

We already use asphalt and asphalt comes from petroleum plastics.

Also petroleum based material.

Why not?

- What does it say that it was South Sioux that did this and as the first in Nebraska?

- You guys have talked to Lance, you've met Lance.

(gentle music) He's very innovative.

-[Lance] I think the big picture is all the plastic bags that are being wasted in our country, and finding a positive use of those bags, I think, will generate more interest and more savings of those bags in a great way.

(gentle music) - This building was once home to another good entrepreneur story.

(gentle music) Harold Lippold founded Kitty Clover during the depression.

An unemployed 18 year old, he bought a defunct company's logo, copper pot, printed bags, stapler and a hand potato peeler for 150 bucks.

(gentle music) From that meager start, Kitty Clover grew to become a snack food powerhouse, and when it occupied this building, it was the world's largest potato chip factory.

(gentle music) The company and factory closed in the 1980s.

In 2025, it reopened as Clover 24 with new life as a multi-purpose hub for artists, entrepreneurs and small businesses.

(gentle music) There are still signs of its Kitty Clover past like this is called the Chip Fryer Gallery because, well, it's where they used to fry the chips.

(gentle music) And that brings us to our last story.

It's about a guy who makes new things out of historic wood.

(gentle music) (upbeat music) -[Mike] Who turns buildings, (upbeat music) bleachers, (upbeat music) And battleships into music making masterpieces.

(upbeat music) (guitar strumming) This guy.

(upbeat music) Phil Whitmarsh turned a makerspace hobby into a business, Old Market Guitarworks.

(saw buzzing) He builds guitar bodies using wood.

He gets from sources like the deck of the decommissioned USS Texas.

(upbeat music) Places with a story behind them, which makes sense for a guy whose day job is helping others tell stories through his publishing business.

(scrapping) This side gig started during Covid.

(upbeat music) - I was looking for something else to do and that something else was building guitars.

(saw buzzing) Had the idea for a while and didn't know when I was going to be able to get that started.

But the way it worked out, I had time to watch videos and practice and build prototypes.

And here we are.

(guitar music) -[Phil] There's a green pencil around here somewhere.

There it is, a red pencil.

-[Mike] Phil grew up with a recycling mindset.

His architect dad once built the kids a playhouse made from shipping pallets.

-[Phil] I kind of thought this looked like a rattlesnake head may or may not use it in a body.

(guitar music) -[Mike] Phil also developed an early passion for guitars, playing a little, then collecting a lot.

(guitar music) He heard about a guitar maker in New York City making guitars from wood saved from a historic hotel renovation.

(guitar music) An idea was born.

(guitar music) So from the very beginning, the intent was not just to build guitars, but build guitars from wood that had a meaning, right?

- Yes, but also exceptional product.

Exceptional output.

(upbeat music) -[Mike] The first was Mary Kate, (upbeat music) built from wood salvaged from the Woolworth building in Omaha's Old Market.

(upbeat music) Phil has since built guitars using wood from the battleship, old barns, a tool company's floor joists and old Memorial Stadium bleachers.

(upbeat music) This one given as a gift to Maroon Five guitarist and Lincoln native James Valentine.

- So you use the Valentine shape.

(upbeat music) Oh, this is sick.

(upbeat music) So these were the (upbeat music) the bleachers.

- Football bleachers.

(upbeat music) -[Phil] It's a nice moment to just remind him that he is still beloved of our state.

(upbeat music) (swoosh) - Tell me about the wood.

(rustling) - These are beams that came from the Susan LaFlesche Picotte Center in Walthill, Nebraska.

(upbeat music) -[Mike] Another special project creating guitars celebrating the first Native American woman to earn a medical degree.

With wood harvested from her clinic.

(upbeat music) -[Phil] We start by cleaning up the wood and getting the nails out.

(upbeat music) -[Mike] Finding and removing nails is one of many steps it takes Phil to make guitars out of old wood over the span of several weeks, often working on several at the same time.

(upbeat music) (saw buzzing) (upbeat music) (scraping) -[Phil] This is where you take all the rough edges off so that they can be laminated together.

(upbeat music) -[Mike] You dig out a few splinters every now and then.

- Every day.

Yeah.

- It's part of the beauty.

The part of the art, right?

- Definitely.

You bleed for your art.

(chuckles) (upbeat music) -[Mike] You like to see imperfections.

- Absolutely.

- I like to see the nail holes and the knots and.

- Yeah, that speaks to me as a person who loves trees and loves nature and.

(upbeat music) - Phil found something I can handle.

(upbeat music) -[Phil] The grain filler is filling the wood grain and pores so that it's easier to shine up the guitar.

(upbeat music) -[Mike] Do you like it?

- Yeah, I like it.

(upbeat music) It feels (guitar strumming) good to know that (guitar strumming) the energy from the wood and from the places and faces is coming through.

(upbeat music) -[Mike] Working with old wood isn't easy.

(gentle music) -[Phil] I think the hardest thing about working with any new project is, is the wood.

Because the wood's always different where it came from, how it's been treated.

(gentle music) -[Mike] For Phil, the results are worth the work because most of the guitars he builds at a wholesale cost are later used by entities to raise money for different needs.

(gentle music) What attracts you to a project?

When do you say, okay, this is something that fits within what I do.

- For me, I think about the function of the material, (gentle music) the history of the material, (gentle music) what has been its life to this point?

Is it something that's going to be disposed of and needs to be perhaps saved from a dumpster or a landfill?

(gentle music) It's helping people dream dreams and realize those dreams in the form of a guitar from a historic place, but special to them.

(gentle music) (guitar strumming) (upbeat music) -[Mike] Another cool thing here is the Creative Reuse store.

Inexpensive recycled art supplies for teachers and other artists.

Well, that's it for this episode of What If.

We've seen a lot of really interesting approaches to recycling here for this episode of What If, but it's time to go.

You can watch all of our episodes and our stories and learn how we only use original music in all of our stories by going to our website, nebraskapublicmedia.org /WhatIf and follow us on social media at #WhatIfNebraska.

Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) (spits out plastic) (upbeat music) (laughs) (upbeat music) -[Mike] No.

You're playing a chord.

(claps) -[Mike] We're not playing (upbeat music) -[Crew] Metallica.

-[Mike] All of Metallica.

Sync.

(clanking) (hollering) -[Crew] Has anybody stepped on a tube light?

(all laughing) - Making a road out of plastic bags.

Ah!

(upbeat music) -[Mike] All right, amuse yourself.

Play the intro to Sandman if you want.

(Justin plays Sandman intro) (loud air blowing) (machines rumbling) - Uh, Oh.

(machines rumbling) (upbeat music) (loud air blowing) (laughing) (engines rumbling) - Oh.

(scraping sounds) - That wasn't very good, was it?

(guitar strumming) -[Mike] All right, you're done.

(guitar strumming) -[Crew] Watching Justin.

(gentle music)