Denver recycles 20 percent of household waste

Denver recycles 20 percent of household waste
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Denver Recycles, a division of Denver Public Works, has announced the city of Denver recycled 20 percent of its household waste in 2016, according to a report in The Denver Post. The city has a single-stream curbside recycling program.

With 80 percent of Denver’s collected waste heading to landfill in 2016, the article reports this is an improvement from 2015, when the city sent 82 percent of its waste to landfill. 

The average participating household in curbside collection recycled 507 pounds of materials and sent 2,354 pounds of trash to the landfill in 2015, the article states. The full 2016 audit has not been released.

The Denver Post reports it visited the Houston-based Waste Management facility where an average of 200 trucks per day bring recyclable materials from Denver’s single-family homes, schools and apartment buildings with seven or fewer units. Multifamily housing properties with eight units or more are not eligible for Denver’s single-stream curbside recycling program. Businesses have to pay to participate.

The newspaper met with Enrico Dominguez of Waste Management, the city’s subcontractor for recycling, who led reporters on a tour of the Franklin Street Materials Recovery Facility (MRF). Dominguez walked them along the sorting line where teams of 30 people work in alternating 10-hour shifts around the clock, five, and sometimes six days a week, the newspaper reports.

Until 2017, all glass bottles and jars that were collected through the curbside recycling program were used to line landfills, Domingues told The Denver Post. “It’s cheaper than hauling in sand and gravel to line the landfills,” Dominguez said.

This changed in 2017 for Denver and surrounding cities that contract with Waste Management for recycling. Momentum Recycling, headquartered in Salt Lake City, recently opened a glass recycling facility in Broomfield, Colorado. Momentum buys all the broken glass, cleans it, separates it by color, and refines it into cullet. Cullet is sold to Owens-Illinois and Rocky Mountain Bottling Co.

The Denver Post offers these ways consumers can help the city reach its goal of a 34 percent recycling rate by the year 2020:

• • If you don’t have a purple recycling bin, call the city at 720-913-1311 to get one.
  • Enroll in the city’s compost program for $10 a month.
  • If you live in an apartment building without recycling, call your landlord and let a city council member know.
  • Invest in reusable tote bags and reusable mugs.

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Source: Recycling Today
Denver recycles 20 percent of household waste
<![CDATA[Denver Recycles, a division of Denver Public Works, has announced the city of Denver recycled 20 percent of its household waste in 2016, according to a report in The Denver Post. The city has a single-stream curbside recycling program.With 80 percent of Denver’s collected waste heading to landfill in 2016, the article reports this is an improvement from 2015, when the city sent 82 percent of its waste to landfill. The average participating household in curbside collection recycled 507 pounds of materials and sent 2,354 pounds of trash to the landfill in 2015, the article states. The full 2016 audit has not been released.The Denver Post reports it visited the Houston-based Waste Management facility where an average of 200 trucks per day bring recyclable materials from Denver’s single-family homes, schools and apartment buildings with seven or fewer units. Multifamily housing properties with eight units or more are not eligible for Denver’s single-stream curbside recycling program. Businesses have to pay to participate.The newspaper met with Enrico Dominguez of Waste Management, the city’s subcontractor for recycling, who led reporters on a tour of the Franklin Street Materials Recovery Facility (MRF). Dominguez walked them along the sorting line where teams of 30 people work…