this deck used to be trash

and nine tons of it came out of Anchorage recycling bins.

There's a brand new deck in Houston built from over eighteen thousand pounds of recycled plastic. Eighteen thousand three hundred ninety pounds, to be exact. The local Rotary club put it up, and they picked that material for a very Valley reason. It's built to stand up to flooding.

The boards come from an Anchorage company called Alaska Plastic Recovery. They collect the plastic we drop off at the city's recycling facility, sort it by hand, shred it, melt it down, and press it into lumber.

Some of the mix even comes from the oil patch. Thread protectors that ship up for North Slope pipe get a second life in the same batch.

The founder says a board like this can last up to fifty years with basically no maintenance. In a climate that eats wooden decks for breakfast, that claim gets your attention.

The company is in its third year partnered with the city, and the drop-off spot takes plastic six days a week. Types one, two, and five.

So the next time you rinse out a milk jug, picture it holding up a porch in the Valley half a century from now. Details on what they take are in the description below.