RecycleWorks is not accepting materials from residents or businesses until further notice — expected to be a matter of days — due to equipment failure following a power outage on Friday, the facility’s manager said Tuesday.
“I’m really, really hoping that by this weekend (it will be fixed), but realistically at this point it’s looking like the beginning of next week,” said Stuart Ashton, operations manager for RecycleWorks, operated by the City and Borough of Juneau.
Technicians with the company that manufactures the recycling baler are scheduled to inspect the machine within the next couple of days to determine what went wrong, Ashton said. If it can’t be fixed immediately onsite parts will have to be shipped from the company.
“The power outage happened right when (recycling staff) did their startup on Friday morning,” he said. “It shut down and then it just would not work correctly, so we’re hoping and assuming that it’s just a short on one of the control computer modules.”
A notice published by CBJ on Tuesday morning states the recycling facility is full to capacity and cannot accept any more recycling material.
“Unfortunately, the volume of material that arrives daily eliminates the use of containers as an alternative option,” the notice adds.
The notice doesn’t apply to curbside recycling, which is picked up by Alaska Waste and is not affiliated with CBJ.
Ashton said on Tuesday morning when he was putting up signs and making plans for dealing with the equipment failure “I think I saw about 30 to 50 people come through” within an hour.
“Throughout the day we have at least 200 visitors on average a day,” he said.
Once the equipment is repaired it shouldn’t be a problem if there’s a deluge of traffic who bring their accumulated recycling in during the coming days, Ashton said.
“They’ll do overtime, whatever we need to do to clear stuff as fast as possible within safety constraints and hours of operation,” he said.
