Members of the Wrangell Swim Club stomp and crush aluminum cans for recycling (from left): AJ Roundtree, Brooke Ostrander, Charlie Nelson and Kailiee Roundtree.
The aluminum can recycling bins next to Wrangell IGA are under new management. Kim Wickman, with the Wrangell Cooperative Association's IGAP department, said the Wrangell Swim Club will handle the can recycling moving forward.
The club is hoping to use the recycling for fundraising, she said, though no major goals have been outlined at this time.
Aluminum can recycling has been used by a variety of Wrangell sports teams to fundraise, Wickman said. Before the swim club, the
Amateur Athletic Union basketball teams managed the recycling.
Though the swimmers will manage the recycling bins, the IGAP department is helping promote the effort.
The swim club has been on a hiatus due to COVID-19, Wickman said. Any money raised from recycling cans will be put into a club's general fund, and the money will be pulled out and used as needed.
Wickman said she did not know how much money they would make. They will get paid by the pound, she said, and the club is planning to send out its first shipment this weekend. She said that they could possibly get between $600 to $800 with the first shipment, but reiterated that was only a guess.
Members of the swim club will go down to the bins by the grocery store on a regular basis, where they will crush any cans to compact the load. Wickman said Wrangell IGA is going to let them piggyback on the store's container when it is barged out of town. The cans will then be sent south to scrap buyer Tacoma Metals, in Washington state.
Wickman encouraged the public to leave their empty, and preferably washed, aluminum cans in the bins to support the swim club. She also said that any cans with cigarette butts or chewing tobacco inside should be thrown out and not left for recycling.
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