Fairbanks

In Fairbanks, it's not dumpster diving, it's dump shopping

FAIRBANKS -- The rain had just lifted on Monday afternoon in Fairbanks, leaving the ground muddy and garbage soaked at the Farmers Loop West transfer station. As cars cycled through the lot, some people came to dump their trash. Others came to take it home.

Head to a transfer station in Fairbanks on any given day, and you will inevitably see a thriving community of dumpster divers knee-deep in the bins or scouting through the re-use section. Coupon clippers, artists and opportunists, they come from all walks of life. Some hope to save money or save the environment. Some want to make a profit. Other simply hoard what they find.

Among the hardcore divers, worries linger that rummaging other people's trash might one day be outlawed. And there's an undercurrent of disgust toward those who make a mess, ruining the transfer stations for those who have a true respect for "trash."

"I open every bag," diver Ty Lafond said Monday, as he displayed his newest finds in the back of his car. "I never come with an agenda. I'm not looking for one thing. I'm just looking."

Tan garbage bins line the perimeter of the Farmers Loop West transfer station, one of the borough's 14 transfer sites that are collectively referred to as "the dump." At the far end, a covered re-use section with concrete flooring is strewn with items, one of five dumps that have a drop-off area where people set aside items that others might want.

Some know the re-use section as "Treasure Island." Household items -- from televisions to strollers, clothing and cleaning supplies, are dropped there. The turnaround time, when someone picks up what another left behind, can be a matter of minutes.

On Monday many items were trampled on Treasure Island, stamped soaking wet into the concrete floor. To some, the area appears as a jumbled mess of wasted goods. Others see a gold mine.

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Lafond had just picked up paint sealer, glass kitchenware and a computer monitor at Treasure Island on Monday afternoon. Wearing a denim shirt and jeans -- which he also found at the dump he spoke proudly of his prowess.

"I am the king of the divers!" Lafond proclaimed.

Lafond said he usually doesn't stop by Treasure Island, preferring instead the garbage bins. He said over his past 15 years of diving he has found "absolutely everything you can imagine -- furs, antiques, coins."

"But I've never found cash, ever," he added.

Lafond said he has given away housefuls of goods over the years. "I've got trunks and trunks and trunks full of tools. Every tool you could imagine, I've got trunks full of it," he said. "But you gotta dig deep, it doesn't jump out."

Nearby, Lafond's friend Fred Renfro was clipping wires from an old washing machine. "He is the king," Renfro agreed. Renfro mainly goes to the transfer sites to clip cords from old appliances, as he has for the past 15 years. He rolls the cords up, burns the insulation off to retrieve the copper wire, and then resells the copper for cash. His profits are enough for "gas money," he shrugged.

When Renfro spots a discarded appliance, he'll make a mental note and wait a week before returning to clip the wires. "Give people a chance, you know," he said.

'I try to encourage people to shop here'

After hitting up Treasure Island, Lafond began his usual rounds through the bins, finding a duct-taped rug that he carried off to his car. Sometimes crowds of divers can gather at the transfer site, but Lafond doesn't worry about competition. Everyone else is mostly "amateurs."

Debra Davis was also searching through the re-use area on Monday, and had just pulled out two boxes of matches that she shook lightly to show that they were full. "We burn wood, it's our primary fuel source," she said. "This will be enough matches for the entire winter."

Davis had come to the dump with a few items in mind. Her daughter was heading to college in the fall, and Davis quickly found a blue duffel bag that her daughter would be able to use.

"Oh my, it's full," she laughed as she pulled the duffel bag close. Women's clothing was folded inside, clean and neat. Davis began to pick up the clothes, gingerly refolding them and placing them into a nearby cardboard box. She plucked two flower-print blouses from the bag and left the rest.

"I just take one thing at a time. I try to do stuff that is really directly useable," Davis said.

Davis said she rarely stops at the "real stores." She instead hunts down goods in the garbage bins and the re-use section. She even finds meat -- this time of year, frozen salmon from people cleaning out their freezers, making space for a new haul. "Some people would be horrified that you actually eat food from the dump," she said. "But uh-uh, no," she shook her head.

She has also made good money reselling goods. One of her sons fully funded two years of college with money gained from reselling scrap metal found at the dump, she said.

"I try to encourage people to shop here, because you know, if you can really get over any stigma involved, you can really help prevent the waste stream," she said.

A few minutes later, a maintenance crew stopped by, closing down Treasure Island while they cleared the items into the bins, to be hauled away to the landfill. Yet later that day, the re-use section was already beginning to fill again.

'I had nowhere else to go'

Lyne Beringer began dumpster diving out of necessity. Now, she credits the dump with helping her get back on her feet following an abusive relationship that left her homeless.

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"I was destitute," she said at her Fairbanks home on Monday. Without the dump, "I never would have gotten as far as I have."

Six years ago, Beringer moved in with her boyfriend and had sold everything she owned. But a year later, she fled the abusive relationship and wound up living out of her car. Beringer borrowed $300 from her daughter to make a deposit on a dry cabin, and moved in with almost no possession to call her own.

"That's why I started going to the dump, because I had to. I had nowhere else to go," she said.

On a recent weekday, Beringer sat in her home furnished almost exclusively with items found at transfer stations. Her two dogs followed her around the single-story home as she pointed to object after object that she had found: All her pots and pans, lamps, chairs, her kitchen rug, artwork, beads and necklaces, vases, stereo equipment and microphones -- she loves karaoke -- flower pots, and a brand new gas stove insert, among countless other items. She never goes into the bins, only stopping by the re-use areas, she said.

Beringer has a good job now, she said, and she is preparing to move into a larger home in North Pole. She'll advertise her current house for rent, she said, but not until she renovates the floor with material she found at the dump.

Although she has come leaps and bounds from where she used to be, reusing materials at the dump is still important to her, partially because of the amount of waste visible there. "I get disgusted all the time," she said.

"If Fairbanks is indicative of every community in the U.S. alone, what are we doing?" she said. "That's my motivation, besides the fact that I had nothing."

Ideally, Beringer would like to see something akin to a zero-waste society. "There wouldn't really be a dump," she said, but rather areas where people leave and pick up reusable and recycled goods.

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For the past few years, Beringer has also been collecting items for impoverished families. She's given away loads of toys -- which she collected and sanitized -- for children at Christmas. She's also delivered warm clothing to the woman's shelter. In July, she already had a batch of scarves ready to go for Christmas, she said.

'Whole new generation that just tears things up'

Beringer fears that one day, the transfer sites will be closed down to dumpster divers. A proposed borough ordinance in 2007 to fine dumpster scavengers was met with fierce opposition by divers and was eventually defeated. But she thinks that proposal might one day resurface.

Closing the transfer stations would be a blow to the community, she said. "There are so many poor people in this town, and it's so expensive to live here."

The Fairbanks North Star Borough is now reviewing ways to improve the transfer sites, from better lighting to increasing recycling areas. Part of the reason Beringer worries that there will be renewed calls to close the areas to dumpster diving is that some people are making a mess of the place -- either tearing up bags and leaving items strewn on the ground, or going to the dump just to smash items up.

Artist Craig Buchanan also spoke of the negative changes he's seen in the past 20 years at the transfer stations.

Out in Ester, roughly 10 miles west of Fairbanks, Buchanan's home is a testament to found objects. He's been collecting found objects and re-purposing them into sculpture since the 1970s. His "Great Alaskan Outhouse Experience," commissioned by the University of Alaska Museum of the North, is perhaps the most well-known. He called that piece, a massive outhouse decked out in found goods, a "tribute to Interior Alaskans."

Several buildings on his property are filled with items he's collected over the years, and more goods line the deck outside. His pieces hang both inside and outside his home.

Transfer sites have been an invaluable source of art materials, he said.

"You can't image the amount of stuff I've found there that was re-purposed," he said. He pointed to one sculpture, made primarily of bulk 35 millimeter film canisters that he found at the transfer station, now painted and lined up neatly on a canvas, hanging on the back exterior wall of his home.

But in the last 20 years, he's tapered off in his use of the transfer station, due in part to major changes in the dump scene. "Now it has kind of been ruined in a lot of ways, by the people who dive the dumpster, they just have no, see no respect for the future."

He spoke of a "whole new generation that just tears things up. It's kind of sad."

On Monday, the Chena Pump transfer station was a wreck much like Buchanan described. Glass from smashed windows littered the re-use section. Shattered televisions sat overturned among paper, photographs and other debris coating the concrete floor. The smell of trash lingered in the air, unlike at the Farmers Loop West transfer station. Passersby complained about the state of the re-use section, shaking their heads at the mess.

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"Why would you do that? It makes no sense," Buchanan said. Hoarders, inevitable, have always irked him.

"These people are just taking stuff away and not doing nothing with it at all, they're just possessing it," Buchanan said.

He now finds himself taking far more items to the transfer station that what he brings home. Still, he never knows what he might find. "When I take my own trash to the dumpster," Buchanan said, "I try to keep an eye out."

Laurel Andrews

Laurel Andrews was a reporter for the Anchorage Daily News, Alaska Dispatch News and Alaska Dispatch. She left the ADN in October 2018.

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