PALMER, Alaska (KTUU) - On a hot August day at the Alaska State Fair, almost everyone in attendance will be sipping on refreshments.
For most, it’s as simple as buying them, drinking them, throwing them in one of the many recycling bins around the grounds, and never thinking about them again.
For one Palmer family, however, it’s an opportunity to help the environment while still enjoying a day together at the fair.
“This is the first year we got talked into helping,” Mayme Troutman said with a smile.
She, eleven-year-old son Mark and eight-year-old daughter Helen are one of several recycling teams that rove the fairgrounds, picking cans and bottles out of the recycling bins and bringing them to the fair’s sorting station.
“I think it’s really important,” Mayme said. “Most people want to do the right thing, do the recycling, put the trash in the trash. So it’s good just to help out keeping everything organized.”
“Having these and helping the world!” was grabber waving Helen’s enthusiastic response to her favorite part of the job. Armed with trash grabbers, the trio moved from bin to bin with a wagon filled with bags in tow.
Once a bag filled up, they took it to the sorting station and the third member of this three-generation cleanup effort.
Mayme Troutman’s mother-in-law Pamella Meekin oversees the final bit of sorting, as well as the pickup from Valley Community for Recycling Solutions and Alaska Waste.
Meekin, who worked on the fair’s administration side for forty years, is in year 25 of spearheading the fair’s recycling program.
“I’m using them kind of as an example,” she said of her grandchildren. “There are so many families that want to come and have it be a family event, so I’m going to kind of restructure this so that we can do that.”
Meekin encouraged families like that to volunteer for next year’s fair.
“Go ahead and have it be a family thing,” she encouraged. “It’ll be a little different, you’ll be limited to what the children can do, but it’s still going to be a great experience.”
The children, for their part, seemed to be enjoying it.
“Help out and make the world clean,” Helen summarized.
