Anchorage Daily News

They came with their broken bicycles, their sagging mattresses, their once-comfy chairs. They brought lumber and brush and rotten old logs, hauled soggy cardboard, empty beer cases and stacks of jagged glass.

They backed up their pickup trucks and sports utility vehicles and trusty Subarus and tossed what was in them onto the heap. Then a giant front loader whipped around with a rumble to shove the remnants of civilization onto garbage trailers.

At the city's central transfer station in Midtown on Saturday, not everything dumped looked like trash, but no matter. The toddler's riding toy, the tall basketball goal, the plastic doghouse igloo were all headed for the same final destination: the Anchorage Regional Landfill.

Saturday was the kickoff for Anchorage's eight-day spring cleaning frenzy, the time to get rid of the junk that accumulated all winter, used motor oil, leftovers from this project or that, purchases that fell apart or out of favor.

Surprisingly, the often-dreaded long lines for the free dump days didn't materialize at the transfer station and people waited only a short while at the landfill on Hiland Road in Eagle River. Maybe everyone is headed there today or next Saturday.

And so the annual purge begins.

"The polar bear goes!" said Brenda Evans, as she tossed the sparkly green bear - a Christmas yard ornament that no longer lights up - over the wall. The sad-looking bear lay on top of some cardboard boxes.

Some trash was curious. Two young guys had a truck full of yard brush and what looked to be heavy duty tripods. What were they for? Were they broken?

"We don't know. We just got hired to clean up some dude's yard," offered Thomas McKinley of Chugiak, who was happy about the short line in Midtown. The duo drove off to collect another load.

"Once it goes over the wall, for various reasons, it's trash," said Mark Madden, director of Solid Waste Services for the municipality. Mainly it's a safety thing, he said, because of the heavy equipment in fast motion.

Don't call him boss of the dump.

"A dump is a hole in the ground where you throw things in the ground and you don't care," Madden said. A landfill has liners and covers and systems for collecting gas and liquids so they don't leach out.

Biff Perry, a North Slope worker, tossed out huge burlap sacks marked with circles and lines that almost floated over the wall, onto what is known in the industry as the tipping floor, since garbage trucks tip their trash onto it. Homemade archery targets, he said. The burlap is stuffed with plastic bags. He has more targets at home.

"What a society we live in," commented Dale Dickson, eyeing the upholstered chairs among the trash.

One was his. It had moved from the house to the yard and now this. His wife didn't want them to look like the Beverly Hillbillies.

"Beautiful, old, overstuffed," he reminisced. Color? "Green plaid, of course."

"I tried to give it away, but nobody would come get it," he sighed.

Dickson, an insurance man, was born and raised in Anchorage. His family homesteaded on what used to be the highest point in Muldoon. The hill is gone now. They used to dump their trash on the back side of it, back in the day.

Anchorage doesn't yet have spots at the landfill sites designated for items that are unwanted but still good. But that doesn't stop folks. Someone set aside an old-fashioned, brown suitcase. An hour later, it was gone.

The city wants to spare what it can from burial in the landfill.

This year for the first time, a city contractor, Alaska Metal Recycling, is parceling out metal during the free dump days at the transfer station and the landfill.

At first, the metal recycling bin and sign were hard to spot.

People drove past it to throw away lots of metal: an old-style snowblower, deck furniture, bikes, a barbecue grill.

Workers moved the metal recycling bin. People hefted kitchen sinks, bikes and metal scraps into it. Old dishwashers, stoves and refrigerators, with the Freon removed, also are being recycled for the metal, as they long have been.

At the dumping spots, people also can recycle old tires; the rubber will be shredded and used to cover and cushion the landfill liner. When a man in a hurry started to toss tires into the garbage pit, another one called him on it, and he put the rest into recycling.

People also can recycle car batteries and motor oil, which is reblended into fuel.

Perhaps the best kept secret of Anchorage trash concerns what happens to stuff considered hazardous waste.

People can drop off their old paint, pesticides, cleaning supplies, camp fuel, and other hazardous items for free, within limits, and not just on the city cleanup days.

And if the product is still good, the city's hazardous waste contractor, Emerald Alaska, stores it in a little building for thrifty scavengers to take home. Bags of fertilizer, cans of paint, wood stain, Comet, and vials of scented oils - all free.

"If you're a pack rat, you don't want to work here," Madden said.

Last year during spring cleanup week, the haul amounted to more than 3.7 million pounds of trash.

Find Lisa Demer online at adn.com/contact/ldemer or call 257-4390.

ADVERTISEMENT