Can do

It was déja vu all over again for David Pelto running the Alaska State Fair recycling center.

For the past six years, Pelto and three other fair employees have worked alongside a small army of volunteers sifting through others’ waste. Sorting plastic from aluminum while collecting the leftover “mystery fluid,” Pelto is up to his elbows in rubber gloves and shares the back of the Orange Parking Lot on the fairgrounds with a host of energetic bees and hornets.

Over the course of the state fair, Pelto and company will have sorted and shipped off about a ton of plastic, 1.5 tons of aluminum and more than 15 large Dumpsters filled with cardboard.

“The state fair takes recycling seriously,” Pelto said. “We have everybody volunteering to help, from ConocoPhillips VPs in charge of something big to the MTA secretarial pool to folks from Pippel Insurance to the Colony High School ROTC.”

The ROTC cadets were in good spirits Monday afternoon collecting and sorting recyclables.

Camden Dinger, a 15-year-old CHS student, admitted that “people’s garbage is pretty gross,” adding that he’s proud to perform a vital service. “If you’re recycling, it’s doing something for the community.”

Ryan Gildersleeve, 18, is the battalion commander for the ROTC volunteers spending his second year toting wagonloads of trash to the recycling tent.

“There’s definitely a lot of stuff,” he said. “We move a ton of material from here.”

While impressed with the amount of recyclable materials plucked from the hands of fair-goers, Gildersleeve said he’s also noticed that many are also lazy.

“If you have a recycling bin across the way and a trash can on the other end, they won’t take the time to walk to the trash can,” he said. “They’ll just put it all in the recycling bin. That’s why you need the recycling right next to the trash can. It makes it harder to sort through the spaghetti and corn and whatever.”

Working the sorting table is anything but glamorous, Pelto said, but the volunteers have a lot of fun as well. And despite the smell, “I have never had anyone puke. I had someone come close a couple years ago … but so far, we’re six years puke-free.”

The humor also can get a little warped around the table, Pelto said.

“You’ve heard the line, ‘What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?’ Well, the jokes that happen here stay here,” he said. “When you get home, they don’t work anymore, because the jokes are the grossest. They’re about corn dogs that have been molding for five days. They’re only funny when you’re standing around here smelling stuff that makes you want to puke.”

As the ROTC youths race through the sorting process, one takes a blast of warm soda to the face. He gets little sympathy from his chortling friends.

“One of the tricks is that when you open a bottle, you wrap your whole hand around the cap when it’s half full so that it sprays right or left and not straight up,” Pelto said. “Usually, I remember to tell the newbies. Last year, I had a VP from ConocoPhillips get himself a whole faceful.”

And while the leftover flat soda, water and juices find their way into 55-gallon drums labeled “Mystery Fluid,” sometimes the less one knows the better.

“You have to know not to open one that looks like apple juice,” Pelto said. “I learned that one the hard way five years ago. It wasn’t mystery fluid, it was known fluid. It looked like apple juice, but it wasn’t.”

Aside from that incident years ago and the usual find of a couple of hypodermic needles every year, there aren’t many surprises on the sorting line, Pelto said. Once he found a $20 bill and another time a soggy $1 bill, which he said he put in a plastic bag and mailed to his brother with a note: “This is what it smells like. Enjoy.”

Contact Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.