Mobile Recycling Pilot Takes Off

There’s a new way for businesses to recycle in Talkeetna, at least for the summer. It began with cardboard and quickly shifted to include cans, bottles, and paper too. With only five businesses, the volunteers are already too busy. 

Talkeetna Recycling Committee Chair Cici Schoenberger stresses the project is a pilot so they can gather more information about what grant funding is needed and how to run it efficiently with volunteers. The Recycling Committee is an official committee of the Talkeetna Community Council so it abides by the same governing rules, which means they are limited to running the program only with volunteers. They hope to include more businesses as they figure out how to scale up.

Many Talkeetna businesses are inundated with cardboard, especially during the busy tourist season. Small shops don’t have a way to store it and owners find it difficult to make it to the recycling center on the two days a week it is open. The mobile recycling van is able to pick up the cardboard and limited other items. Though the recycling center is only open on Tuesday and Saturday afternoons, volunteers can access the recycling area on Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday mornings when the transfer station is open.   

There is so much cardboard that the team is working with Su Valley High School to use their recycling container instead of taking it to the recycling center. But they will lose access to that bin when school starts again. Schoenberger says the Borough is working to reconfigure the transfer site so there is a way to bale and store the cardboard out of the weather and better route the traffic. 

The new mobile recycling program is quickly growing larger than the volunteers can handle right now so new volunteers are needed. The team expects to use the information collected from the pilot this summer to write grants over the winter. They expect to scale up the project next summer.