he community wants a recycling program,” says Matt Pearson, recycling manager for the Fairbanks North Star Borough (FNSB). “There has been a long-time push from community members for a centralized location where they could bring materials and electronics.”

Pearson says people have many reasons for recycling, from stewardship of resources to reversing climate change. For the FNSB, the reason is more quantifiable. Each borough resident produces around 5.8 pounds of trash per person per day, above the national average of 4.4 pounds. Without recycling, every waste product ends up in the FNSB landfill on Sanduri Street in southwest Fairbanks, decreasing the lifespan of the 250-acre facility. As it stands, the landfill is designed to last until 2070. Once it’s filled, the borough will need additional acreage for a new dump site.

“Reducing or diverting material can extend the lifespan of the landfill,” says Pearson. “It can also reduce the amount of methane gas being released from discarded materials breaking down.”

Borough-led recycling began twenty years ago with the Used Oil Energy Recovery program, which serves as the primary fuel source to heat the main landfill building. Soon after, FNSB began exploring a borough-operated recycling service, which culminated in 2017 with the opening of the Central Recycling Facility (CRF) on the north side of town.

The government-run recycling center serves as the drop-off point for five materials: aluminum beverage containers, corrugated cardboard, mixed paper including newspaper and office paper, plastic bottles and jugs (#1 and #2), and electronics, which are processed by Green Star of Interior Alaska.

In less than five years of operation, the CRF has collected more than 2,043 tons of materials. Despite a learning curve during the first year, Pearson says the facility has run smoothly, minus a small closure during the pandemic.

Oh, and one other hiccup. The CRF closed with the start of the municipal fiscal year on July 1 when the borough and the facility operator were unable to agree on a new contract. Borough officials expected procurement of a new contractor would take two to three months. As this article goes to press, the CRF may be back in action, or it will be soon.

The CRF is closed to anyone outside of FNSB boundaries; the facility only accepts items from residents and local businesses. As a public service, residents can drop off materials at no charge, while commercial entities pay a fee of $75 per ton for regular recyclables and $700 per ton for electronics.

“Processing and shipping recyclables to the Lower 48 is expensive,” Pearson explains. “Our recycling broker gets us the best prices for materials on the commodities market, but we aren’t making a profit, which is fine because we’re a government agency.”

FNSB residents can choose whether to recycle or not, so presorting recyclables out of their trash isn’t mandatory in the FNSB. Since regular trash pick-up is only available within Fairbanks city limits, residents outside those limits haul their own trash either to the landfill or to a nearby transfer site. At those sites, none of the transfer bins are set aside for recyclables; it’s just not worth it. Without constant supervision to ensure materials are sorted properly, the risk of contamination increases.

For those who choose to recycle what they can, CRF has a few guidelines beyond five basic accepted materials.

For instance, the recycling center accepts aluminum beverage cans but not aluminum pie or foil pans; shiny cardboard with pictures on it but not waxy food shipping boxes; mixed paper but not paper cups, plates, or towels.

The Fairbanks North Star Borough Central Recycling Facility provides covered bins for residents to place their sorted recyclables. Materials are then compacted in a baler, loaded for transportation to Anchorage, and then shipped to Washington for final processing.

FNSB Central Recycling Facility

The Fairbanks North Star Borough Central Recycling Facility accepts #1 plastics and #2 bottles and jugs for recycling. Recycling Manager Matt Pearson says not all #2 plastic bottles are the same and encourages people to refer to informational material on the borough website for clarification.

FNSB Central Recycling Facility

The real tricky one, Pearson says, is #2 plastics, or high-density polyethylene (HDPE), commonly found in milk jugs or detergent bottles. HDPE bottles with a “neck” are manufactured using a blow molding process and are easier to recycle. Containers without a “neck” made with the same #2 plastic, like butter tubs or yogurt cups, are manufactured by injection molding, which creates a very stable product that is more likely to be reused for storage. Injection-molded plastics crack and are difficult to bale; however, skipping the baling process means paying for “air weight” when transferred to the plastic recycler, so the CRF decided not to accept these items or shopping bags.

“We have comprehensive guides on our website to help people identify recyclable products and additional information on how to sort them prior to bringing them to the recycling center,” Pearson says.

He says presorting ensures that materials are collected and recycled properly, reduces drop-off time, and speeds up the baling process. Washing bottles prior to presorting helps the recycling center meet the industry standard of 0.5 percent or less contamination. Materials that are brought to the CRF are inspected for quality before compacting into bales. Bales are transported to Anchorage then barged to Washington for transportation to mills for processing into new products. When possible, cardboard and newspaper remain in Alaska; Thermo-Kool in Wasilla turns newspaper into cellulose insulation.

Electronics collected at the CRF have two potential fates: recycled as component materials or refurbished for resale. The borough partnered with Green Star of Interior Alaska for this service. Green Star takes electronics collected and sorted by the CRF and prepares them for shipment to downstream recycling vendors or for resale. Prior to the CRF temporary closure, Green Star received up to 2 tons of material weekly. Green Star Business Manager Sarah Marshall says thousands of items per year pass through their sorting process, such as TVs, desktop computers, laptops, keyboards, and monitors.

Marshall says volunteers determine which items to reuse or resell in the local warehouse. The remaining items are broken down and transferred to Total Reclaim, Inc (TRI), an electronics recycler. Breaking down items includes removing all cables and wires; sorting materials by type (computers, monitors, TVs, cables/wires, et cetera); stacking and wrapping large items securely on pallets; and sorting, preparing, and packaging batteries by type for safe transportation. When there is enough to fill a 40-foot trailer (donated by Air Land Transport), the materials are shipped to the TRI facility in Anchorage. From there, TRI ships the electronics to its main recycling plant in Washington. TRI decides which items to refurbish for resale and which are further broken down into component materials for reuse on the commodities markets.

“Electronics have a built-in obsolescence,” Marshall says, “which means residents, businesses, and organizations have to replace them more often. [Electronics are] a large quantity of items that contain precious metals and recyclable materials that we keep out of our landfill.”

Extending the life of the borough landfill is only one reason Green Star of Interior Alaska takes an active role in recycling. Cherissa Dukelow, Green Star program and outreach manager, says recycling prevents the unnecessary strain on natural resources, especially when it comes to electronics (e-waste).

“The more precious metals we can recycle, the fewer metals we have to extract from the ground,” Dukelow says.

Donlin Gold is already extracting precious metals from the western Interior, even though the mine developer is still in the permitting stage. The company, in partnership with the Association of Village Council Presidents and other Yukon-Kuskokwim entities, participates in the annual electronics recycling effort known as the “In It for the Long Haul” Backhaul Project.

Electronics are just as popular in the Bush as anywhere, and just as liable to wear out. The difference is that all those mobile devices, office appliances, game consoles, and TV sets that were delivered to remote communities at great expense and effort are, for practical purposes, stuck at the end of the proverbial road.

The solution, for the past five years, has been a barge owned and operated by the Native Village of Napaimute. Every summer, the barge visits communities along the Kuskokwim River to collect e-waste, such as discarded computers, old batteries, and more. This year, seventeen villages participated. Meanwhile, Grant Aviation, Ryan Air, and Alaska Air Transit fly materials to Bethel from thirteen other communities, including McGrath and Nikolai, at no cost to the communities or the project.

Items are stored in Bethel and repackaged for shipment to Anchorage or Seattle for disposal or recycling. By the end of 2022, the sixth year of the Donlin Gold backhaul program, Donlin Gold project partners will have collected nearly half a million pounds of harmful waste that would have otherwise ended up in landfills or waterways.

In addition to collecting regular recyclable materials, the Fairbanks North Star Borough Central Recycling Facility also serves as the drop off site of electronics processed by Green Star of Interior Alaska, which sorts through electronics to determine what can be repaired, reused, and resold locally and what needs to be broken down, packaged, and shipped to Washington.

FNSB Central Recycling Facility

Cardboard and mixed paper makes up the biggest component of municipal solid waste nationwide, yet more than two-thirds is recycled, the most of any material.

FNSB Central Recycling Facility

Kristina Woolston, external affairs manager for Donlin Gold, says removing waste from rural communities is extremely important. Unlike the Fairbanks landfill, most remote landfills don’t have liners that prevent toxic materials from leaching into the groundwater. Likewise, there aren’t as many options to dispose of materials off the road system.

“The majority of our employees and their families live and work in this area,” says Woolston. “Managing material disposal can have a long-term impact on their health and the health of the community.”

The vastness of Alaska has presented an obstacle to statewide recycling efforts. In 1978, voters rejected a ballot proposition to impose a $0.10 fee for every beer or carbonated beverage container sold, partly because of the complication of refunding the fee in the Bush.

Although the initiative exempted vendors off the road or mainline ferry system, it would’ve required containers to have two separate labels depending on where they were sold: “Alaska Refund – 10 cents” or “Rural Alaska – No Refund.” However, rural customers might buy containers in cities and then take them home, and transporting the empties back was more costly than the refund.

A decade later, though, stranded aluminum cans found an escape route. Alaskans for Litter Prevention and Recycling (ALPAR) and the Alaska Air Carriers Association teamed up for Flying Cans. The association’s member airlines donate backhaul capacity on their planes, giving about seventy rural communities access to recycling. According to ALPAR, more than 14 tons of cans were flown to Anchorage this way in 2019. ALPAR pays communities market rate for cans, revenue which in turn often pays for local youth programs.

In 2009, ALPAR expanded the program to include Flying Bottles. It only applies to #1 plastic (polyethylene terephthalate, the most common water and soda bottles), and ALPAR doesn’t have enough cash to pay communities for the resource. And for both bottles and cans, communities must store materials indefinitely until air carriers have space available for the load.

Squirreling away recyclables is how Fairbanks is coping with the temporary shutdown of the borough’s CRF. Sure, residents could also choose to throw everything in the trash, but recyclable material need not be scrapped forever just because the borough isn’t collecting it for a little while. Private companies C & R Pipe and Steel and K&K Recycling are taking aluminum items.

Over the longer term, the FNSB might be able to expand service with increased collection hours. Pearson says the main obstacle has been limited space; a larger facility would allow more storage until materials are loaded in the baler. A large enough facility would allow the installation of a horizontal baler, which is easier to load than the current vertical balers and would increase the amount of material that could be loaded at one time. Procuring a contractor is just a bump in the road for the CRF.