Anchorage Daily News

PALMER -- With a one-second buzz-saw whine, the Bulb Eater at the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Household Hazardous Waste facility turns fluorescent tubes into glass bits.

"It looks like something out of a sci-fi movie -- an old sci-fi movie," said Mollie Boyer, executive director of Valley Community for Recycling Solutions.

Meanwhile, the Bulb Eater made shards of another tube.

The machine grinds up glass from fluorescent tubes and sucks out mercury and phosphor vapors locked inside. It was a gift to Valley Community for Recycling Solutions, presented Friday by John Binkley, executive director of the Alaska Cruise Association.

The machine is built like a giant wet-dry vacuum, with a 55-gallon drum as its belly and a big high-efficiency air particulate, or HEPA, filter on top. On one side, a long black tube sticks up where the bulbs are loaded. As the vacuum sucks the bulb into the drum, a motor atop the drum spins short lengths of chain to break up the incoming glass. The vacuum sucks the vapors from the bulbs into the filter.

Stripped of chemicals, the glass can be recycled. The chemical-laced HEPA filters must be discarded at a hazardous waste facility.

The machine will be housed at the new borough hazardous waste facility, where employees are trained to deal with things like discarded paint, engine oil and antifreeze, said Greg Goodale, borough Solid Waste Division manager.

Boyer said the Bulb Eater will help reach an important recycling goal: cutting down the amount of hazardous waste going into the landfill.

"We're partners. This helps us, too," Boyer said. "The more hazardous it is, the worse it is for our landfill."

Goodale said he and his employees had been talking about getting a bulb-eating machine for a while. Fluorescent bulbs are already being recycled there, he said, but the machine makes things much easier.

Until Friday, collecting bulbs meant filling a long, large cardboard tube with whole bulbs and shipping them to a recycling facility. Shipping costs were high and bulbs often broke as they were being collected, releasing the vapors inside.

The new machine holds between 1,200 and 1,500 bulbs, and with the chemicals removed, the glass no longer must be treated as hazardous waste.

Emerald Environmental, a company contracting with the borough to remove hazardous waste, will dispose of the used filters, Goodale said. He's looking for a place to send the glass.

The Cruise Association donated a Bulb Eater to Seward last fall and, according to Binkley, plans to donate others around Alaska. The group formed last year to "find ways to increase economic benefits Alaskans receive from cruise lines operating in the state, address environmental issues and improve community relationships," according to a press release.

Binkley said the machine, manufactured by Air Cycle Corp. of Illinois, is in use on many cruise ships that visit Alaska. There's an industry-wide push to increase recycling efforts, Binkley said. Borough residents can drop fluorescent bulbs off for free recycling from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays at the household hazardous waste facility next to Central Landfill.

Find Rindi White online at adn.com/contact/rwhite or call 352-6709.

ADVERTISEMENT