No Peaceful, in general, there are no recyclers in and around the city for the food grade barrels. When people order the (often juice concentrate) they empty the barrels (for bars etc who use the concentrate on tap) and the company comes to get the empty barrel and bring a new one. They recycle the barrels at Mabelton who then sell the barrels. You can however purchase rain barrels, and look for them at yard sales and garage sales or again, on Craig's List. I've found people who move sometimes can't take them along and they are inexpensive.

You can cut it just below the rim so it will fit back on itself. Use hinges that you may have to bend slightly in one or two places. Small heavy duty hinges about 1 inch may not need to be bent. If you cut the top out inside the rim. you will have to screw a block of wood inside in about 4 places so the lid does not fall thru. Put an old cabinet pull or another small block of wood for the handle. You can cut just half of the lid and hinge it in the middle if your watering can will fit. We used a jigsaw to cut openings in ours.

Just a tip for anyone who is thinking about making his/her own rain barrels. The rain barrels on the website Buford purchased from look really nice; however, we've learned at least one thing the hard way from the experience of making our own and that is not to put the spigot up so high on the barrel. Some of the pictures on the rainbarrelsandmore.com website show the spigots at about the midpoint of the barrel. What happens then is that fully half of the water in the barrel can't get out through the spigot. If you make your own barrel and are putting a water spigot on it, I'd suggest you put the spigot down as low as you can, then put the barrel itself up on top of a sturdy cement block, rock, or board platform that is high enough to allow you to put a bucket or watering can under the spigot. One other thing we've learned is that you really don't get much water pressure from these things, even when they're full of water and lifted up off the ground. In our community garden, we had planned to attach drip hoses to them that would be gravity fed, but they really don't have enough pressure to force the water down through a drip hose. So we water by hand with watering cans. You may wonder when you see the photos, so I'll just say that we're not using these barrels to collect rain, only to distribute water throughout the garden. But there are two things to think about when converting your barrel; 1)how will the water get inside of it and 2)how will you get the water out of it when you need it. From my own personal experience I also recommend cutting a hole in the top that is circular and just about as big in diameter as the barrel. The reason being, it allows you to pretty much climb inside the barrel to clean it out as needed. We've been using our barrels for only one season and I've had to clean algae off the insides quite a few times already. (not just from the inside of the semi-opaque white barrels in the picture but also from the inside of colored ones that the sun doesn't shine through) If you look up how-to directions for rain barrel conversions online, most of them will tell you to cut a smaller, rectangular hole in the top. And (again, my own experience - maybe yours will be better!) in addition to the smaller hole making it harder to keep the inside clean, I also found that opening up the whole top instead of just cutting a small square made it much easier to put in the spigot, and to reach around to put the spigot lower down on the side of the barrel. We're using plastic sheeting tied on top to keep out mosquitos, but if I were collecting rainwater from gutterspouts I think I would use a stiffer aluminum or plastic window screening with a hole cut in that to insert the gutterspout. And in case you're wondering, the plastic sheeting doesn't work that well (eventually cracks up because of sunlight exposure). It was just a cheap and quick fix. I'm hoping to be able to afford to use rolled window screening next year. Here is a link that might be useful: Photos of Homemade water barrels with spigots

Thanks! Looks like the closest Rural Kings to Indy are in Columbus, New Castle & Martinsville. Their website shows 55 gal barrels for $9.99. Groovy. (Weirdly the TSC website didn't show these, I was kinda surprised.) Also got an email from Indyrose that I can also find them for $15-20 at B & B Box & Drum Inc 1527 Miller Street, Indianapolis, IN 46221 Thanks for the help!