The City of Glenwood Springs invites the public to participate in a groundbreaking ceremony at 11am on Monday, Oct. 19, for the new Downtown Recycling Center near the Rio Grande Trail at 13th Street.
The project is funded in part by a $149,600 Recycling Resources Economic Opportunity (RREO) grant.
The City’s in-town recycling center was previously located on School Street and was moved to the South Canyon Landfill in February of 2017. In 2019, City Council approved the purchase of the new site located at 13th Street and Pitkin Avenue just down the road from the former downtown recycling center site.
With the assistance of this grant, the City of Glenwood Springs will be able to this fall re-establish a convenient recycling center in downtown Glenwood Springs with the goal of initially increasing the City’s recycling rate by 25% to return to pre-2015 levels. Construction on the project will start immediately following the groundbreaking and is anticipated to last three weeks to a month.
In 2019, the City of Glenwood Springs processed 51.35 tons of glass, co-mingled tin and aluminum; 1,811 tons of plastic; 1,213 e-waste items; and 610 appliances. The Landfill also composted 1,260 tons cardboard, 300 tons manure, 276 tons grass and leaves, and 184 tons wood chips.
Colorado has made strides when it comes to diverting trash from landfills by reducing, reusing and recycling waste, but there is still plenty of room for improvement. According to CDPHE, in 2007 the state diverted only about 7 percent of the nearly 10 million tons of household and commercial trash generated that year. Eleven years later, those numbers have improved as 17 percent of roughly 7 million tons of waste was diverted from landfills in 2018. Yet Colorado still lags well behind the national average of 35 percent for waste diversion.
The event will be outside and social distancing measures are required.
About the RREO Grant Program
The Recycling Resources Economic Opportunity Act (HB 07-1288) created the RREO Grant Program with the intent to fund implementation projects that promote economic development through the productive management of recyclable materials that would otherwise be treated as discards. For more information about RREO grants, visit www.colorado.gov/cdphe/recyclinggrantrebates.