{"id":479785,"date":"2026-02-20T11:23:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T11:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/479785\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T11:23:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T11:23:09","slug":"juneaus-recycling-center-to-open-at-limited-capacity-after-weekslong-closure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/479785\/","title":{"rendered":"Juneau\u2019s recycling center to open at limited capacity after weekslong closure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ktoo.org\/2026\/01\/29\/it-could-be-weeks-before-juneau-residents-can-recycle-again\/img_0070-1\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-347419 nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Cardboard and other recyclable materials stack in a pile at Juneau\u2019s recycling center in Lemon Creek. (Photo courtesy of Stuart Ashton)<\/p>\n<p>After multiple weeks of closure, Juneau\u2019s recycling center is back up and running at limited capacity.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The partial reopening comes after the center has been closed on and off since late December, after Juneau was hit with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ktoo.org\/2026\/01\/05\/snowpocalypse-continues-as-juneau-runs-out-of-places-to-put-it-all\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">back-to-back record-breaking snowstorms<\/a>, which inundated it with a backlog of materials to process.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Denise Koch, the city\u2019s director of Engineering and Public Works, says the center will begin by accepting only cardboard and mixed paper, and only for this Friday and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3:30 pm. Other recyclables like plastic and glass are still on hold.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe know that recycling is an important service for people, and we know it\u2019s been really inconvenient for people to hang on to their recycling,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The city contracts with Waste Management to operate its recycling program in Lemon Creek. Waste Management is the private company that runs Juneau\u2019s only landfill, which is estimated to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ktoo.org\/2025\/03\/21\/juneaus-landfill-is-estimated-to-fill-up-in-the-next-decade-a-solution-could-take-much-longer\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">run out of space in the next decade.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Since late January, the city has been asking residents to hold onto their recyclable material while it fixed multiple issues with the recycling baler, which is the most critical piece of equipment for the center to operate. The baler is the machine that compresses the recyclables into blocks, which are then <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ktoo.org\/2024\/04\/18\/how-well-does-juneau-recycle-and-where-does-it-all-end-up\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">shipped by barge<\/a> to recycling facilities in Seattle that repurpose the materials.<\/p>\n<p>Koch said while the baler has since been fixed, the city is opening the center up at a limited capacity so that the machine does not get overloaded. She said the center\u2019s staff will then decide further openings depending on how the baler performs this weekend.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are, of course, hoping to be able to do that as soon as possible,\u201d she said. \u201cWe are planning to make another announcement on Monday, after we see how things go on Friday and Saturday, and how quickly we\u2019re able to move through material.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>More information and updates can be found on the city\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/juneau.org\/engineering-public-works\/recycleworks\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">RecycleWorks webpage.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cardboard and other recyclable materials stack in a pile at Juneau\u2019s recycling center in Lemon Creek. (Photo courtesy&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479786,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[221594,63592,192,117360,221595,79,19048],"class_list":{"0":"post-479785","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-cardboard","9":"tag-city-and-borough-of-juneau","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-recycle","12":"tag-recycle-center","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-waste-management"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}