Thanks for fair recycling effort

Valley Community for Recycling Solutions (VCRS) would like to take this opportunity to extend a hearty thank you to the many individuals, vendors, organizations and businesses that helped make recycling during the Alaska State Fair a success again this year.

Their combined efforts kept more than 17 tons of corrugated cardboard, No. 1 plastic bottles and No. 2 plastic jugs, mixed paper, office paper, aluminum cans, plastic bags and steel cans out of the central landfill.

Thank you to the more than 235 individuals and those from businesses and organizations who volunteered to collect recyclables from all over the fairgrounds and bring them to the sorting station — all were invaluable. And thank you to the many businesses that donated snacks or gift cards to feed our hard-working volunteers.

There are two very special volunteers who worked the entire 12 days of the fair, plus several days before it opened and after it closed. Kathleen Asay and Carole Henry picked up mounds of cardboard from vendors daily before the gates opened to the public.

Thank you to Matanuska Electric Association for donating an older truck for this purpose. It will continue to be valuable to VCRS operations at its recycling center. Thank you to MTA for the donating cell phones to coordinate and deal with the logistics involved with the volunteer-based recycling. Thank you to the Deschamps family for the use of its camping trailer at the sorting area for storage and a dry volunteer warm-up space.

Thank you to the Alaska State Fair for working with VCRS and Green Star to establish recycling as a permanent part of the fair. The continued improvements to the recycling sorting area and support personnel provide important infrastructure to further reduce the amount of landfill-bound waste generated during the fair. A booth was donated to the fair this year, and the fair intends to place it in the recycling sorting area to serve as headquarters/break room during the fair and store related supplies year-round. We really appreciate that.

Thank you also to the 63 volunteers running the recycling education outreach booth at the fair, which helped to make the Alaska State Fair in Palmer the stand-out annual recycling event in the state and one of the top fair recycling programs in the nation.

A special thank you to both Valley Recycle Pick Up and Alaska Waste for their help and cooperation with this great program.

And finally, thank you to all the fairgoers who used the recycling containers. Together we are turning it around.

Pete Praetorius

VCRS board president

Wasilla