By Margaret Bauman
Alaska Journal of Commerce

Thousands of pounds of used electronics, refrigerators, lamps, fluorescent bulbs and more are finding their way to Total Reclaim in Anchorage each month, prompting a broad smile on the face of Larry Zirkle, who knows he can recycle it all.

After sorting, it's all headed south to Seattle - an average of 180,000 pounds a month - for the many parts of all the products to be sorted for further use in the nation's economy.

“Our shop before was about 2,800 square feet and busting out at the seams,” said Zirkle, who manages the Anchorage facility in cooperation with his brother, Jeff, who manages the Seattle facilities. The company is owned by Jeff Zirkle and Craig Loch.

“In December, we doubled the size to nearly 4,800 square feet and we are already busting out at the seams again, in part because of what we offer to clients and customers,” Larry Zirkle said.

Once accepted at Total Reclaim, the products are separated out for component parts, glass, aluminum, end caps and mercury-bearing phosphor powder for recycling and use in the manufacture of new products. An increasing number of people are willing to pay a small fee per pound to have their discarded electronics recycled, rather than end up as hazardous waste in dumps, he said.

The company is eager to educate the public about why and how they should recycle. To that end, they have teamed up with Green Star in Anchorage to collect tons of electronics and spread the mantra of recycling to communities and companies throughout Alaska. Green Star recently presented Total Reclaim with an award for its efforts.

Zirkle and his employees, determined to let the public know how serious they are about conserving energy, also are commuting to work on their bicycles, while calculating the energy-saving cost of fuel not used.

“We don't want to just talk; we want to walk the talk,” he said. “We recycle at home. We believe in taking care of the land.”

On a Monday morning in early June, stacks of computers from the federal Bureau of Land Management were waiting for shipment south, while nearby two employees sorted and emptied aluminum cans of soda from Alaska Airlines.

“We are still getting a lot of computers and CPUs and televisions,” Zirkle said. “We definitely are seeing a higher volume of televisions over the last few months. People heard their old TVs wouldn't be good (after the switch to digital) and they panicked.”

Total Reclaim is also seeing a number of refrigerators and freezers, florescent bulbs, lamps and ballasts, batteries, microwave ovens and other things electronic.

Zirkle said community response to the need to recycle is growing. Anchorage-area participants in the program include the municipality, Alaska Airlines, BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc., Providence Alaska Medical Center, the Southcentral Foundation and such utilities as Alaska Communication Systems, AT&T Alascom and Matanuska Telephone Association.

Numerous private firms, including a number of Alaska Native corporations, also participate in the effort, he said.

“We just got 45,000 pounds of electronics from Fairbanks, and Haines will ship about 20,000 pounds of electronics directly to Seattle via Alaska Marine Lines,” he said.

A one-day recycling event in Nome yielded 18,000 pounds of electronics.

High schools and community centers also have cooperated with Total Reclaim in recycling events.

“Last fall we had a weeklong event for Beans Cafe,” Zirkle said. “We asked people to bring donations for Beans along with recyclables, and ended up taking about (a dozen) 4-foot-by-4-foot boxes of food to Beans, and we also took in a lot of electronics.”

Education is also a key component of Total Reclaim's mandate. The company's outreach coordinator, biologist Reilly Kosinski, travels to communities all over Alaska speaking at schools and to adults about how and why they should recycle. He has designed a packet of simple demonstrations, which he or teachers in schools can use to demonstrate the many parts of a single product.

One demonstration uses watercolor markers, coffee filters, water, Q-tips and paper cups to show the power of water as a separating agent, how to extract iron, how to separate salt and flour and more.

Kosinski also welcomes more ideas for classroom use relating to activities, demonstrations or presentations related to environmental science or waste management.

“We are not just recyclers,” Zirkle said. “We are in the business of educating, and the income will follow. The income will sustain us if we are good at teaching. And with our outreach program, we are developing more soldiers, more people (to participate in the program.”

Zirkle is particularly keen on getting rural Alaska more active in recycling.

“For thousands of years, villagers have been taught to bury their waste material or put it near the water to be washed away,” he said. “When this was all organic matter, there wasn't a problem. But now they're dealing with a different type of waste. They run the risk of releasing high levels of mercury, lead and fecal bacteria into surround rivers.”

Given the rising cost of fuel, which adds to the cost of moving products to locations where they can be recycled, Zirkle continues to work closely with Green Star, government and tribal groups, as well as private entities, to increase the volume of recycling in Alaska.

On the Web: www.totalreclaim.com/alaska.

Margaret Bauman can be reached at margie.bauman@alaskajournal.com">margie.bauman@alaskajournal.com.