After months of on-and-off closures and limited services, the city’s recycling center will be back to operating at full capacity and regular hours starting Tuesday.
Stuart Ashton, the city’s recycling manager, thanked the public for its patience while the center was often closed for repairs.
“This recycling center being a cornerstone of waste in Juneau for decades now, not only do people rely on it — they expect it,” he said. “The amount of phone calls, and then people checking in that really, this is part of their weekly waste stuff on the way to Costco.”
The recycling center had been dealing with mechanical issues since late December, after Juneau was hit with back-to-back record-breaking snowstorms. In the interim, the city had asked residents to hold onto their recyclable material while it fixed the recycling baler.
The baler is the most critical piece of equipment that allows the center to operate. It’s the machine that compresses the recyclables into blocks, which are then shipped by barge to recycling facilities in Seattle that repurpose the materials.
For a few weeks, the centerʼs services were limited as staff repaired and tested the baler. Ashton says the baler is now fixed and the center is able to operate during regular hours at full capacity. That means it’ll once again accept plastics No. 1 and No. 2, glass, tin cans, aluminum cans, mixed paper and cardboard.
The city contracts with Waste Management to operate its recycling program in Lemon Creek. Waste Management is the private company that runs Juneau’s only landfill, which is estimated to run out of space in the next decade. Ashton said recycling plays a major role in diverting material from the landfill and extending its life.
“We all know that the landfill is going to be closing eventually, and that’s pretty much why it’s so important,” he said. “It’s part of all waste in Juneau, and it’s how costs stay down and how whatever the new path will be, it’s a cornerstone of it.”
Aston said moving forward, the city plans to have more oversight at the facility to ensure proper maintenance of the baler and prevent events like this from happening again.
The recycling center will be open at regular hours starting tomorrow. It operates Tuesdays through Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
