KMXT 100.1 FM Public Radio in Kodiak, Alaska
With the holidays coming up people tend to have more ‘stuff’ in the house. Thinks like cardboard boxes and shipping materials from delivered gifts, wrapping paper and those funky old Christmas lights that don’t work anymore.
Before you haul it all out to the trash, which just goes to straight to the land fill, take a moment to rethink your strategy.
KMXT’s Maggie Wall has more.
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A great way to get that warm holiday feeling is by doing something good for the community and the planet and it’s as simple as taking your dry waste cardboard and wrapping paper to a local recycling drop-off point.
Threshold Recycling Board President Chris Lynch was a guest on KMXT’s “Talk of the Rock” program this week. Threshold provides jobs to people with disabilities who are employed by the non-profit to sort recyclable materials and to performing other tasks.
Lynch said you can even recycle those tangled up old Christmas lights.
“Because it’s the holiday season. We also are encouraging people to recycle their Christmas wrap any of your wrapping papers, and cardboard. We know that you’re getting gifts, you’re buying presents. So all of those things come in boxes. So if you’d break down your boxes and bring those to us, that would be awesome.
“And then we’re also taking your Christmas lights that the lights that you decide to put on your tree or put up outside and they didn’t work, you can bring those on down to us instead of throwing them in the garbage. So can you recycle.”
Wall: “Christmas lights? Are you just doing that as a service?”
Lynch: ”We do that as a service every year and it goes into our electronics, and we do recycle electronics.”
While the cardboard can be taken to a neighborhood drop off site, those old strings of lights need to go to the main recycling center on Von Sheele.
And for those who are not familiar with local recycling drop-offs, Lynch says there are a number of places around town where you can take cardboard. The first is the recycle center itself, which is also called ‘The Haven.’
“Besides taking your recyclables, not only your cardboard but your recyclables, you can take them to the Haven, which is on Von Sheele.
“You can also take them to satellite drop offs, which we have drop offs in Bells Flats where the little store used to be, there’s a drop off on the spit at the senior center, and at Bayside, and then there’s additional cardboard rolloffs. One is Sergeant Creek and Sharatin, and I believe there’s one at Safeway as well. So there’s lots of opportunity to recycle cardboard.”
Nick Szabo is the chairman of the Kodiak Solid Waste Advisory Board, known as SWAB. He asks that people flatten cardboard boxes and other bulky items before dropping them off, thus allowing more items to fit in a receptacle.
Dave Conrad is the Director of Engineering and Facilities for the Kodiak Island Borough which runs the land fill and baler. He says recycling benefits everyone in Kodiak.
“We do see a lot of cardboard on the floor at the bailer when the rollouts are dumped in it. It does take a little bit of time, but sometimes just to do a good thing you need to invest a little time and effort.
“And Nick said it, if we can reduce the amount of cardboard going into the landfill, and Chris’s group Threshold’s can gain some benefit out of it. It saves space in the landfill.
“And obviously, all of our garbage bills are, you know, high enough that if we’re cognizant that that definitely helps the environment and it helps the bottom line for threshold.”
And one week from Christmas Day is New Year’s Day. Why not consider making a resolution to recycle?
