WHERE DOES OUR TRASH GO IN SEATTLE? PART 1: A VISIT TO THE NORTH TRANSFER STATION
By Kira Telgen, Blue Daisi’s Project Assistant
Situated among breweries and climbing gyms on the southeastern edge of Fremont, you’ll find the North Transfer Station. Driving down 34th, the facility is unassuming, its large concrete walls tucked away behind carefully manicured trees and shrubs, its pedestrian entrance outfitted with a sprawling sculpture of orange metal. I’ve walked by the building a handful of times on my way to the Seattle Bouldering Project, strolling through a small garden on its eastern side, never knowing what I was passing.
When I walked up to the building in late January, I wasn’t even sure I was in the right place. As I went up the single flight of stairs to the viewing room, I was surrounded by people. Tiny people. Very young people. Toddlers. Hovering just above the main floor of the North Transfer Station in the facility’s observation deck are a handful of displays and a bucket full of children’s toys. It’s quiet, spacious, and contained—the ideal space to bring a rambunctious child for a few hours. While I waited for Moji, a boy with scarlet cheeks grabbed my leg for support as we looked down at the dump trucks and piles of waste.
Moji is a magnificent boss—she’s extremely passionate about her work and strikes the nearly impossible-to-achieve balance between providing ample support and guidance for her employees while letting us take ownership of our work. When I joined Blue Daisi, she made it clear that personal development, in particular learning about the communities and systems we’re assisting, is a company priority, and our field trip to the North Transfer Station in late January was an opportunity for us to put this commitment into practice.
The North Transfer Station was first constructed in the late 60s and renovated to its current glory around a decade ago, officially reopening in 2016. It is one of two waste collection and distribution facilities in the city and can handle up to 680 tons of waste and recycling per day. The main stage of the building is its “tipping floor,” a 63,246-square-foot concrete landing area where dump trucks and residents can drop off materials. It’s essentially a large warehouse, complete with an opaque skylight ceiling and trash compactors hidden beneath the floor.
The room Moji and I met in stands on the second story of the building overlooking the tipping floor and features a scale model of the facility and interactive material sorting exhibits. In the latter, to unlock trash, recycling, and compost cans, a visitor must correctly identify which materials go where, serving as an educational tool and fun activity for all ages. The scale model of the facility shows visitors how vehicles enter and deposit materials on the tipping floor and how those materials are pushed into the compactors beneath the building.
Perhaps the most shocking tidbit you’ll learn upon your visit is that all the material you see on the tipping floor and the dozens of dump trucks that enter the warehouse every hour dumping household and commercial waste, is only just starting its journey. While recyclable and compostable materials go to their respective local facilities, Seattle’s waste is compacted, loaded onto semi-trucks, and then placed on a train. That train carries our trash 320 miles to the Columbia Ridge Landfill in Arlington, Oregon.
The amount of energy and resources we put into disposing of materials is shocking and difficult to grasp. It’s not as if we see these trains leaving Seattle every day. When you visit the North Transfer Station, though, what is most striking is looking down onto mountains of material and spotting items that could and should be recycled or composted. When that small rosy-cheeked child and I gazed out onto the tipping floor, he was in complete awe of these magnificent machines hard at work. I, too, was in awe, but for a very different reason. Clinging to my jeans was a member of our next generation of bright-eyed, hopeful, loving young people, and I feared that the world we were building for him wasn’t all that it could be.
Our visit to the North Transfer Station was an eye-opening one. The facility is full of promise and potential, receiving various awards and recognitions for its design innovation and community-oriented features. It gives us a reimagining of what buildings and spaces can be. A waste collection facility doesn’t have to be a place where people simply deposit their trash. It can be a park, a children’s playroom, or an educational opportunity for community members. Instead of disguising itself, desperate to sanitize itself or make itself more palatable, the North Transfer Station integrates itself into the community. This, I believe, is the North Transfer Station’s greatest contribution.
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