Glass recycling coming to Mat-Su next year

PALMER — For the first time in nearly two decades, glass recycling is coming to Mat-Su.

The Valley Community for Recycling Solutions center near the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Central Landfill in Palmer will begin accepting glass in June, officials there said. All types and colors of glass will be accepted, and labels do not need to be removed before drop-off, borough officials said.

“The community really wants glass collection,” Borough Solid Waste Manager Jeff Smith said at a Mat-Su Assembly meeting early this month. “They talk about it all the time, so this is a pretty exciting thing for them.”

Recycled glass will be pulverized into fine sand using a $185,000 machine newly purchased by the borough from New York-based Andela Products and expected to arrive in Alaska by May, officials said. The sand will be available for purchase at the recycling center for use in road traction, in concrete, for landscaping or combined with compost, Smith said.

Other materials dropped off at the recycling center — including cardboard, paper, plastics and aluminum — are sold to buyers and shipped out of state, said Tamara Boeve, executive director for the Valley Community for Recycling Solutions, which oversees recycling collection in Mat-Su. The organization stopped accepting glass in 2008 because its weight made transporting it to Anchorage or out of state too expensive and the borough lacked a local processing option, longtime employees there said.

The Assembly unanimously approved the pulverizer purchase this month. Landfill fees funded the purchase, Smith said.

While the borough owns the machine, the recycling center will house and operate it, he said. The recycling center will also handle sales of the processed material and keep any proceeds.

The Valley Community for Recycling Solutions is a nonprofit funded by grants, donations, sales of collected goods and about $200,000 in annual borough subsidies. Drop-offs at the Mat-Su recycling center are free to users, but donations are encouraged, Boeve said.

Glass will not be accepted with other recycling at the region’s trash transfer stations — at least for now, Smith said. Transporting heavy materials like glass from the transfer stations to the recycling center is very expensive, he said, and the borough will consider adding that service once officials identify a way to cover the cost.

Recycling services offered by the Municipality of Anchorage and the Kenai Peninsula Borough also accept glass, but neither pulverizes it into fine sand, officials in those locations said.

In Anchorage, workers crush glass into chunky gravel and stockpile it because uses for it are limited and no buyers are currently interested, said Kelli Toth, municipal recycling services coordinator. In Kenai, glass is crushed into fine gravel for use as landfill cover material, said Tim Crumrine, the Kenai Peninsula Borough’s interim solid waste services director.

Just how much glass will be dropped off through the new Mat-Su program is unknown, Boeve and Smith said, with little data available on which to base estimates.

Mat-Su residents currently discard between three and six glass bottles and jars a week that could be recycled under the new program, according to a recent survey of about 1,000 people conducted by Colony High School students.

Smith and Boeve said they also have no estimate for how much glass residents are currently transporting to Anchorage for drop-off there — a common practice that the municipality discourages, Toth said.

Information on the total amount of glass recycled in Anchorage this year was not readily available, Toth said. Previous data shows at least 1,200 tons collected in Anchorage annually.

If the Mat-Su recycling center processes more glass than the recycling center can resell, Smith said, the excess will be used in a composting program under development at the landfill.

“I hope we have more glass than we know what to do with, because I have a way to use the glass if we run into that problem,” Smith said in an interview. “You mix up to about 50% sand with 50% compost, and you get this wonderful material that’s just perfect for anybody’s yard, growing things, you name it.”

Republished with permission from the Mat-Su Sentinel, an independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan online news source. Contact Amy Bushatz at abushatz@matsusentinel.com.