Rubbish as a resource.

• Author: Carroll, Ed
• Position: Recycling - Industry Overview

Recycling has been slow to take hold in Alaska, but the sense of opportunity is growing at this junction of environmental awareness and economic efficiency. Here are the experiences of those who are leading the way in Alaska.

Harvey Bowers doesn't sound like an environmental radical. More like an old-fashioned inventor who's convinced of a great idea and driven by an almost missionary zeal. A zeal for recycling.

"This is a hobby that's grown out of control and is consuming me," he says.

Bowers, a Wasilla bed and breakfast owner and a former executive director of the Alaska Craftsman Home Program, is part of a new wave of inventors and entrepreneurs. Starting with an interest in environmentally sound business, Bowers and Mat-Su Valley science teacher Richard DeBusman were excited three years ago by the opportunities they saw in using recycled materials.

Bowers and DeBusman are among the founders of the Alaska Center for Appropriate Technology (ACAT), a Wasilla-based, non-profit organization committed to finding "sustainable technologies" for Alaska. Bowers describes the group's mission as "not just environmental, but to look at technology that would improve life in Alaska."

Bowers and DeBusman were inspired by the presentation of a forest products innovator who spoke at ACAT's first "Trash to Treasure" conference in April 1993. Their belief in Dr. Roger Rowell's message - that manufacturing industries can be built using almost any region's waste stream for its resources - has sustained them. Now they're ready to produce a prototype run of one of the hottest prospects among the state's developing recycling-based industries.

Bowers and DeBusman plan to produce the first 100 full-size sheets of medium density fiberboard, a building product in high demand worldwide. "It's got a pretty well-developed market in Alaska," Bowers says, with the most typical uses including stock for furniture, cabinets and molding and millwork.

The innovation of their prototype is that it uses about 50 percent waste paper, and the remainder of the particle board can be a mix of "virgin" wood fiber and recovered wood from things like pallets and construction debris. The inventors and their supporters hope to build a production plant in the Mat-Su Valley, if they can use their product and market research to attract investors.

The fiberboard project illustrates much of what has been learned around the country about developing recycling industries. Foremost, good intentions do not sustain a business; market savvy, product demand and profitability do. But as a corollary, the environmental awareness that has led to increased recycling has created a steady supply of new raw materials. From small shops to the country's largest manufacturers, business is adapting to take advantage of resources recovered from the waste stream. And many states have recognized that recycling industries offer the booming small business sector - and their economies - the promise of new growth and diversification.

The fiberboard project also illustrates many of the challenges facing recycling industries in Alaska. The market for new products reflects our population: small and sparse. Using recycled materials as a feedstock for processing means ensuring a steady supply, but ironically, Alaska might not produce enough waste to make many projects work. Collecting from outside the road system may never happen. And in the population centers, landfill space is often such a cheap alternative established by public policy that recycling participation may always lag behind more efficient economies in the Lower 48.

But the project also highlights what's possible here. Using the resources of ACAT and a handful of supporters in government, Bowers and DeBusman have gained access to information and an education. The learning process has emphasized the need for identifying niches where demand can support small-scale reprocessing businesses.

"There's a whole host of products that we could be making in Alaska that nobody's doing anything with," Bowers says.

So far, recycling's impact here has been small. At the Anchorage Regional Composting Facility on Point Woronzof in Anchorage, owner John Dean is one of three full-time employees turning yard wastes into garden soil. At Thermo-Kool in Anchorage, owner Tom Davis employs 10 during production peaks, grinding newsprint into cellulose insulation for houses, bedding for animals and hydro-seed mulch. And at the granddaddy of Alaska recycling - the Anchorage Recycling Center - Tom Turner oversees 35-40 employees for Anchorage Refuse Inc., where he's now vice president for marketing.

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