Anchorage Daily News

Catherine Kilby, among a hard-core handful who showed up in subzero temperatures at the recycling center Friday morning, got bad news at the bottle Dumpster: For the next few months, the city isn't recycling glass.

Click to enlarge

Story tools

Comment on this story

E-mail a friend

Print

Digg this

Seed Newsvine

Send link via AIM

Font size : A | A | A

"That's irritating," she said, standing next to her idling car. "We don't need more things going to the landfill. If I'd known, I wouldn't have let it pile up."

Recycling in Anchorage isn't easy. It means collecting bottles and newspapers for weeks and dragging them across town. The latest headache with glass recycling, which grew out of a backlog of glass, is only temporary, though still inconvenient.

But, possibly as soon as spring of 2008, everything could get easier, said Kevin Harun, the municipal renewable resources manager.

The city is creating a comprehensive recycling plan, where residents would only have to drag most of their recyclable items as far as the curb.

People have been talking about a recycling program for years, maybe even decades, but this time things are different, Harun said. The municipality has hired Colorado-based Skumatz Economic Research Associates, a recycling consultant, to come up with a plan. SERA, which has a $69,000 contract, has helped curbside recycling happen from Fort Collins, Colo., to Seattle. The first meeting for the project will be early next month.

"We're going to take it seriously; the community is enthusiastically behind it," Harun said. "We want to make sure it's done right and it makes sense financially."

SERA will work out the details, but the broad idea for the plan is to charge more for garbage disposal and make recycling free. So the more you throw away, the more you pay, Harun said. If you recycle and reduce the amount you throw away, you save.

Landfill fees, currently $45 a ton, would rise.

"If we do it right, the costs should even out," Harun. "If the consumer is recycling, and we have variable garbage rates, they should have no higher costs. That's what we're aiming for."

A similar system has worked in many other cities, Harun said.

All of this, of course, would have to be approved by the Assembly.

About 16 percent of waste in Anchorage goes to recycling, according to Harun. Nationally, the average is 31 percent, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The western United States had the highest recycling rate, at 38 percent, according to the recycling publication, BioCycle.

The big issue with recycling in Anchorage is the city is far from markets for recycled goods, said Lisa Skumatz, of SERA. But, she said, even Hawaii has a recycling plan.

All recycled items are sold on markets that fluctuate depending on the demand. For cardboard or plastic, which are in demand and easier to ship, getting to market is more economical. But, for mixed-colored glass, which isn't in high demand and is heavy to ship, it's harder.

The solution for that is to find a local market, Harun said. Currently, there's a local market for newsprint, which gets made into insulation. Anchorage's glass plant, run by a company called Polar Supply, pulverizes glass bottles into granules, which are sold locally for blasting and railroad traction sand.

The problem at the moment is that plant is backed up with recycled glass and has enough of one grade of the granules to supply local markets for a year, said Steve Gordner, Polar Supply civil division manager. The market isn't quite strong enough to support the amount of glass being recycled, he said.

Harun said there may be other markets for the glass, including use in the oil drilling process. It's important that people keep in the habit of bringing it to the recycling center, because there will eventually be a market.

"We hope within a few months they'll be taking the glass again," he said.

Another factor slowing glass recycling is that Polar Supply is looking to sell off its glass processing equipment and wants to have a clean lot.

"I have a buyer that's shown interest, that got put on hold until the whole process with the consultant is over with," Gordner said.

Even with a new recycling plan, glass may not be picked up at the curb, Harun said. A little bit of broken glass can contaminate a load of paper, sending it to the landfill, he said.

One thing that helps the city develop a recycling program is that the price paid for many recycled goods is high, driven in part by manufacturing in China, said Mary Fisher, head of Alaskans for Litter Prevention and Recycling. Fisher was optimistic that the next round of talks about recycling could end with curbside collection.

"The city has never really done a study of this size," she said. "This is the whole system."

Friday morning, at the recycling center, all the recyclers said they would welcome a curbside program. Susan McNeil couldn't bear the thought of her glass going to the landfill.

"I'll probably hold on to all my glass until they decide to do it again," she said.

Daily News reporter Julia O'Malley can be reached at jomalley@adn.com or 257-4325.