Solid Waste Services accepts fish carcasses in effort to increase lifespan of landfill

A heap of integrated worldly smoking astatine Solid Waste Services successful Anchorage connected Sept. 17, 2024. (Matt Faubion/AKPM)

A aviator programme successful Anchorage is accepting food carcasses for nan first clip this year. It’s 1 of respective caller initiatives astatine Solid Waste Services that purpose to support integrated worldly and plastics retired of nan landfill.

The Material Recovery Facility Center is turning integrated waste, which includes food carcasses, nutrient and plot scraps, into compost. The halfway besides accepts plastics marked 1, 2 and 4, for illustration h2o bottles, clamshells, and hangers.

Kelli Toth is nan head of Solid Waste Services successful Anchorage. Compost tin amended ungraded value and supply nutrients to plants, truthful Toth said it’s highly valuable to gardeners. 

“It’s conscionable different measurement of taking nutrient scraps and turning it into thing great,” she said.

The compost worldly was put up for bid, and is trucked to a workplace successful Palmer. 

The halfway reestablished a woodlot, which was closed successful southbound Anchorage successful 2022. It accepts trim trees and branches, and is added to nan integrated compost. It’s successful business pinch nan Anchorage Fire Department and intends to beforehand wildfire mitigation and diversion, Toth said.

Kelli Toth, head of SWS successful Anchorage, speaks astir efforts to make abstraction successful nan landfill connected Sept. 17, 2024. (Matt Faubion/AKPM)

Residents propulsion distant astir 200,000 pounds of trash a time and there’s little than 40 years of landfill usage left, according to Toth. Some lower-48 states carrier discarded to landfills successful different states because of constricted landfill abstraction and biology regulations. But that isn’t an action successful Alaska.

Toth said it’s clip for residents to return steps successful bid to lengthen nan life of nan landfill, and it tin beryllium arsenic easy arsenic choosing cardboard complete plastic.

“What I’m capable to do pinch nan cardboard container is I tin usage it arsenic a weed blocker, I tin adhd it to my compost. I tin reuse it a mates times until it’s ratty, and past usage it arsenic compost aliases a weed blocker, and past it conscionable becomes portion of nan soil,” said Toth.

Toth said residents contributed astir 77 tons of organics to nan halfway successful August. SWS hasn’t decided if nan programme will proceed adjacent summer. 

The Material Recovery Facility Center is unfastened done October 31.