Anchorage Daily News

Anchorage's biggest trash hauler announced plans Monday to nearly double the number of homes that can get curbside recycling.

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Alaska Waste said its new offering means 35,000 of its 44,000 residential customers will be able to recycle cardboard, mixed paper, recyclable plastics, tin and aluminum and have it picked up at their homes.

The company, which has about 80 percent of the trash pick-up market in Anchorage, already offers curbside recycling in parts of the city. Those areas are generally west of C Street.

The expansion plan spreads the offering into subdivisions on the lower Hillside including Kempton Hills and Ocean View neighborhoods, and into parts of Muldoon and Eagle River.

Alaska Waste's announcement came the day before the Anchorage Assembly is due to revisit the recycling issue with some proposals of its own. The panel tonight will consider an increase in fees at city dump sites to help pay for parts of a recycling program.

The Assembly last month approved an initial move into recycling, agreeing to offer curbside pick-up to 3,500 of the 12,000 customers of the city's garbage utility, Solid Waste Services. In the face of financial uncertainties aired by several Assembly members, however, the panel postponed a decision on an increase in dumping fees.

Since that meeting, a new proposal has been written up and will be on the table tonight, according to Assembly members and city officials. It reduces the proposed increase in dumping fees on business loads from $8 a ton to $3, reduces the money proposed for a recycling program in schools, making it a one-time grant instead of an ongoing revenue stream, and cuts the proposed recycling centers from three sites to one.

"The revenue will be used to open one recycling center (at Hiland Mountain) initially," said Assemblywoman Debbie Ossiander, "and we'll wait on the other two until we see the success of the curbside program Alaska Waste is proposing." Recycling centers had been considered for Muldoon and in the Huffman area.

About 3,800 of the 18,000 Alaska Waste customers who before Monday's announcement could get curbside recycling have signed up for it, according to the company. "With this expansion it's (offered in) most of Anchorage," said Katy Suddock, recycling coordinator at Alaska Waste.

Jeff Riley, Alaska Waste's chief operating officer, said those who choose the service in the expanded areas will start getting curbside pickups probably in mid-July. "We're announcing this prior to the actual arrival of the equipment to support it so that we can begin to establish a customer base and try to group the deliveries," he said.

"It's pretty hard until I know who's going to want to sign up for the service to try to route it and tell people what day their pickup will happen. ... But it's kind of our commitment to try to pick everybody up on the same day that their garbage is serviced."

Carts for the homeowners in the new areas to collect the recyclable materials would start going out in early July, according to an Alaska Waste press release. The service costs $6 a month. The company is looking at a plan that would decrease trash pickup rates as homeowners cut garbage and increase recycling.

For its part, the city has been under increasing pressure to implement a recycling plan. Solid Waste Services has about 20 percent of the residential trash pickup market.

Critics say Anchorage is the largest city in the country that doesn't have a recycling program.

The proposal under review tonight would also push the administrators toward a "zero waste" policy in city government, create no-cost leases on public lands for composting areas and wood lots, and provide funding for smaller programs going on now, such as Christmas tree and phone book recycling.

Assembly Chairman Matt Claman said he's "very optimistic" about the chances for passage of the package.

Find Terry Carr online at adn.com/contact/tcarr or call 257-4582.

SIGN UP: Alaska Waste customers in the areas where curbside recycling is offered can sign up at the company's Web site at

www.alaskawaste.net

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