Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** the purpose of the project is to…

Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** the purpose of the project is to discover a way for the city of anchorage to divert more organics from the landfill. The anchorage regional landfill has less than 40 years of useful life, and our landfill continues to produce increasingly more landfill gas. The focus of this project is to work with commercial kitchens, large food waste generators, and purchase commercial dehydrators and establish infrastructure for collection, transporation, storing and applying the dehydrate. Two years ago, the city of anchorage convened stakeholders called the anchorage compost coaltion, that identified priorities such as composting year round and minimizing the transportation time, cost and impact on the environment. Currently the solid waste services composting program consists of curbside collections in a defined service area of anchorage. Once the curbside organics are collected, IT is combined with compostables collected by private haulers at the anchorage regional landfill and then transported to a farm in the matanuska valley. Round trip, from anchorage is approximately 94 miles using a tractor trailer. SWS determined early in the curbside composting program that the containers tend to turn into organic popsicles, freezing in the containers making disposal troublesome so the program runs may through october. IT is difficult to encourage behavior change then pause putting organics in the dump during the frozen months. The dehydrate sounds like the perfect option for anchorage. Targeting commercial waste large food waste generators means that we will have tighter controls on what goes in to the dehydrators. Outputs will include careful monitoring and data analysis of the input, processing, output, and application. In addition, once the liquid is removed from the food waste, we are told the dehydrate has no smell, will be exponentially densified, and is shelf-stable. Data includes the volume output, what containers and how can IT bestored. Transportation is another important part of the project. Choosing what containers to match the volume output, energy used, and which trucks will be ulitized, how will the dehydrate be stored are all outputs from this study. Application of the dehydrate is also part of this study. Alaska has very young, nutrient deficient soils. Can the dehydrate by applied directly to soils as an amendment, how does IT react when contacting water, in various applications, can IT be added to a compost mix, FED to livestock, chickens or the fish hatchery? If we are able to find that the dehydrators do not take too much staffing time, energy, and are efficient in producing a shelf-stable product that can be applied in various scenarios, perhaps anchorage can meet the goals of the coalition, to compost year round, divert more organic material from the landfill, and regenerate soils for food security, and feed livestock right here in anchorage.