From The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, Sunday, June 13, 2010:
Car after car pulled up to a line of bins sitting in a parking lot at a local homeless shelter. Some bins held paper. Some cardboard. Others aluminum.It was Saturday, the busiest day of the week at the Fairbanks Rescue Mission Recycling Center. But it wasn’t just any Saturday. It was a day the 10-month-old recycling center hit a milestone.
The program collected its millionth pound of recyclables.
Soon, a forklift operator drove out of the warehouse carrying a bale of newspapers wrapped in plastic and topped with a big red bow.
Rodney Gaskins, executive director of the rescue mission, and seven others gathered around the bale and said a prayer.
Recycling isn’t the only work done at the center. The operation provides a place for rescue mission clients to sharpen their job skills and learn new skills, including forklift driving.