Alpine Waste & Recycling shut down its Denver recycling facility for a month to retrofit the plant with new technology and equipment. When it reopened in the middle of March, the $2.5 million investment proved to be 33 percent faster at sorting paper from cardboard, aluminum cans from yogurt containers and juice cartons from plastic-lined […]
recycling
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Why Styrofoam — amid all of Colorado’s recycling struggles — is being targeted for extinction
Styrofoam is the bane of any environmentalist’s leftover lunch. But even as some Colorado cities have tried to ban and food stores — including McDonald’s — have ditched polystyrene foam in favor of more sustainable containers, it hasn’t gone away. It’s time, said Sen. Dominick Moreno, a Democrat in Commerce City who is pushing a […]
Posted inEnvironment, Politics and Government
How a first-year Colorado lawmaker tried to “go big or go home” with a zero-waste bill
This is the second story in an occasional series as part of The Colorado Sun’s Capitol Sunlight project explaining how state government works. Read part one — and part three. The deadline for her bill title looms, and Lisa Cutter doesn’t know where to start. Just two months earlier, the first-time candidate won an improbable […]
Posted inBusiness, Environment, News, Technology
Thousands of usable iPhones trashed by one Colorado firm because well-meaning donors forgot to turn off “Find my iPhone”
In neatly sorted stacks and bins in a warehouse in Lafayette, 3,378 smartphones and tablets are waiting to be trashed. They are all used, all donated in the past three weeks, and most are in fine working condition. There are even four Apple iPhone Xs. But this batch of iPhones and iPads won’t join the […]
Posted inBusiness, Environment, News
Forget plastic bans: Mountain towns try volunteerism, bootcamps as solutions to single-use
The sister towns of Telluride and Mountain Village bagged plans to ban plastic straws after learning about an arcane Colorado law preventing municipalities from doing so. But that hasn’t stopped the resort communities from searching for alternatives to single-use plastics — or even recycling. The two towns, separated by a free gondola ride, feel the […]
Posted inBusiness, Environment, News, Politics and Government
Colorado’s ban on banning plastics has cities’ plans to outlaw single-use bags and straws in limbo
On its way to considering a ban on those flimsy disposable plastic grocery store bags, the city of Denver found out it can’t. Apparently, there is a Colorado law that bans municipalities from banning plastics, and Denver isn’t the only one to be taken aback. This may seem peculiar in a state where at least […]
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Coloradans produced a record 9.3 million tons of trash last year. Only 12 percent of it was recycled.
A new report released Wednesday from Colorado environmental organizations has bad news for Mother Earth: The state’s recycling rate hasn’t improved and the amount of trash produced by Coloradans hit a record of 9.3 million tons in 2017. “We set the wrong record,” said Danny Katz, State Director of the Colorado Public Interest Research Group […]
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Meet the robots and other contraptions making Colorado’s recycling more efficient
Clarke may be a little stiff, but he picks out milk and juice cartons from a pile of moving trash better than any man or woman at the Altogether Recycling plant in Adams County. The discriminating robot, named after sci-fi icon Arthur C. Clarke, can also work all day and night, if necessary. In another […]
Posted inBusiness, Environment, News
Colorado’s largest recycling company — finally — will be able to recycle Starbucks and other coffee cups
Alpine Waste & Recycling, Colorado’s largest recycling company, has figured out what to do with the perfect cup of coffee: Recycle it. Starting as early as Oct. 1, the company will begin picking up paper cups from coffee shops and household customers and transport them to a Wisconsin mill for proper recycling. The deal makes […]
Posted inBusiness, Environment, News
Recycling in Colorado is tedious, cost-prohibitive, voluntary — and evolving
Brent Hildebrand, a vice president at Alpine Waste & Recycling, sets on a table a mangled piece of metal. In a previous life, it was a horseshoe. “That little piece of metal caused our equipment to be down for a couple of hours. That’s huge for us. We just couldn’t find it, it was so […]