The Wonders of Transfer Sites: Finding Treasures in the Trash
By Sarah Olson
The greater portion of people living in Fairbanks do not have a trash or recycling service, which came as a surprise to me. I came from a city where we had a large bin that all of our trash went into and the bin would get picked up by a dump truck once a week. The convenience of trash service makes one not really think too much about where their trash goes, you would just put it at the end of your driveway and within a day it was gone.
There is a different system for garbage collection in Fairbanks, which I became more in tune with as I started living off campus and had a couple more real-world responsibilities. One of which was, of course, taking out the trash. I soon learned that the Fairbanks North Star Borough has a system called “transfer sites”, which in essence is a self-service dumpster. There are a handful scattered across town, including one directly across from campus. Transfer sites include about thirty large dumpsters, a toxic waste area, a ginormous bin to dump organic matters, and also an area underneath a pavilion-type structure with countertop space for miscellaneous items. This pavilion structure is unique to transfer sites as people leave their old items that can be salvaged and used again by somebody else. In my eyes, it's like a Value Village, but everything is free. There are items I have picked up there that I continue to use today, including a pair of skis, tires for my car, and my favorite wool sweater.
The salvage seemed to always be full: new couches, refrigerators, ellipticals, and more, sitting under the roof for days at a time before being picked up by a wanting individual or being taken away to the dumpster by the dump truck. Driving home, I would test my luck to see if I could find anything nice; it was a nice part of my daily routine. Recently though, there has been less buildup of goods at the transfer site.
After digging into the mystery behind the lack of goods waiting around, I came up with an answer as to why there wasn’t nearly as much recently. I was hoping for an over-the-top, exciting answer: maybe that there was a new disease forming among the ravens after spending too much time at the dump. Maybe it was along the lines of the increasing amount of crime at the transfer site due to a high volume of goods and traffic. Or perhaps it was to encourage people away from hanging around the transfer site. To my disappointment, it turns out that there just is not as much traffic during the winter. The dump trucks are still on the same schedule that they always follow, but there are fewer people bringing items to the transfer site in the winter which limits a large build-up of goods between dump truck runs. I guess it makes sense, after all, one has to be slightly crazy to do a big cleanout in the middle of winter when the sun is sparse and a day of about zero degrees is a lucky strike.
When spring is underway again, I’m sure peoples’ spring-cleaning kick will jumpstart traffic at the transfer sites again.
Do I recommend going to the transfer site for a casual weekday activity? Maybe! You might find your favorite sweater, perhaps a new refrigerator, or a groovy couch. Who knows what you’ll find…there’s only one way to find out!