Materials collected from Denver recycling bins sit in a transfer station last week. (Tre Spencer/BusinessDen)
The official who leads Denver’s recycling efforts said the city had a 12 percent increase in collected recyclable materials in the first six months of the year compared to the same time in 2022.
Nina Waysdorf, the city’s waste diversion and recycling manager, attributes that to the increase — from 19,800 tons to 22,243 tons — to new policies implemented by the city and an overhaul of its waste program.
The city hopes to continue to trend.
Currently, only 26 percent of trash from Denver households is diverted away from landfills in the area. That’s below the national average of 32 percent, although it’s better than Colorado as a whole, where only 16 percent is diverted.
Diversion rates measure the amount of material that is not taken to landfills. The city calculates that percentage by adding all the material explicitly collected for composting and recycling.
Denver set a goal in 2021 to increase the city’s diversion figure to 50 percent by 2027 and 70 percent by 2032.
The increase in collected materials comes as the city now offers households weekly recycling pickup, up from bi-weekly prior to this year. As part of that change, the city also began charging households for trash and recycling pickup for the first time. Households are also slated to get a composting bin, although many residents are still waiting on them.
Waysdorf noted voters also passed a ballot initiative last year requiring restaurants, offices and apartment complexes to offer recycling and composting services.
“I think those numbers show that there’s a lot of opportunity to increase recycling and composting, and access to those materials plays a big role in it,” she said. “We’re definitely trying to go well above and beyond the current recycling rate.”
Of the materials thrown in a recycling bin, 85 percent is ultimately sent to recyclers, according to the city. The rest is considered contaminated and ultimately sent to a landfill in Aurora.
When recyclable materials are picked up from Denver homes, they are taken to a transfer station where they are deposited. Materials are then packed onto trucks, weighed, and sent to a “material recovery facility.” There, recyclables are sorted between paper, aluminum, plastics, cardboard and glass. Those materials are then packed into bales and shipped to processing facilities like Golden Aluminum or Glass to Glass.
Locally, aluminum is processed and recycled by Golden Aluminum in Fort Lupton. The company founded by Bill Coors Sr., a member of the brewing family, uses recycled aluminum to create beer cans, caps and alloys.
Waysdorf said aluminum and glass are primarily recycled in Colorado, and aluminum cans are precious in the market.
“Our materials generally stay domestic, and with being landlocked and working with the great partners that we have, we can keep our materials in North America,” she said. “Aluminum is infinitely recyclable, so that’s often made into new cans.”
She also said recycled glass can be logistically challenging to transport, so it’s processed with facilities on the Front Range.
The city’s recycled glass goes to a facility named Glass to Glass, where glass is often turned into bottles and sold to beverage companies. According to the company’s website, the facility is located in Broomfield and breaks recycled glass down into a material named “cullet” so that it can be remelted and molded.
Recycled glass can be put back on a store shelf within 60 days and, like aluminum, is infinitely recyclable, according to the company.
Elizabeth Chapman, executive director of Recycle Colorado, a nonprofit that aims to improve recycling, said other items collected, like paper, plastics and cardboard, are harder to recycle locally and are often worth less in the commodities market.
“Most materials are sent out of state to get recycled,” she said. “Paper largely goes to the central Midwest near the Great Lakes area, cardboard goes to Arizona, and a lot of plastic gets sent overseas to get recycled. Paper is very challenging to recycle here because paper recycling requires a lot of water.”
She also said because of fluctuations in the commodities market for recycled materials, it’s often difficult to predict what the prices for certain materials will be. That instability can make it difficult for companies to invest in recycling.
Waysdorf said whether the city makes money from picking up recycling depends on the commodity market at any given time.
Chapman said Denver’s diversion rate is so low because of a lack of education. She said people often contaminate recycling streams by participating in “wish cycling” or throwing things away that they wish would be recyclable.
“With materials that are put into the recycle bin, the vast majority of that material is recycled,” she said. “Contamination is a problem for sure, but the larger problem is lack of education. Some of the reasons that we get so little material is that it couldn’t be recycled, wasn’t put into the proper bin, or people just don’t care enough to recycle at all.”
Materials collected from Denver recycling bins sit in a transfer station last week. (Tre Spencer/BusinessDen)
The official who leads Denver’s recycling efforts said the city had a 12 percent increase in collected recyclable materials in the first six months of the year compared to the same time in 2022.
Nina Waysdorf, the city’s waste diversion and recycling manager, attributes that to the increase — from 19,800 tons to 22,243 tons — to new policies implemented by the city and an overhaul of its waste program.
The city hopes to continue to trend.
Currently, only 26 percent of trash from Denver households is diverted away from landfills in the area. That’s below the national average of 32 percent, although it’s better than Colorado as a whole, where only 16 percent is diverted.
Diversion rates measure the amount of material that is not taken to landfills. The city calculates that percentage by adding all the material explicitly collected for composting and recycling.
Denver set a goal in 2021 to increase the city’s diversion figure to 50 percent by 2027 and 70 percent by 2032.
The increase in collected materials comes as the city now offers households weekly recycling pickup, up from bi-weekly prior to this year. As part of that change, the city also began charging households for trash and recycling pickup for the first time. Households are also slated to get a composting bin, although many residents are still waiting on them.
Waysdorf noted voters also passed a ballot initiative last year requiring restaurants, offices and apartment complexes to offer recycling and composting services.
“I think those numbers show that there’s a lot of opportunity to increase recycling and composting, and access to those materials plays a big role in it,” she said. “We’re definitely trying to go well above and beyond the current recycling rate.”
Of the materials thrown in a recycling bin, 85 percent is ultimately sent to recyclers, according to the city. The rest is considered contaminated and ultimately sent to a landfill in Aurora.
When recyclable materials are picked up from Denver homes, they are taken to a transfer station where they are deposited. Materials are then packed onto trucks, weighed, and sent to a “material recovery facility.” There, recyclables are sorted between paper, aluminum, plastics, cardboard and glass. Those materials are then packed into bales and shipped to processing facilities like Golden Aluminum or Glass to Glass.
Locally, aluminum is processed and recycled by Golden Aluminum in Fort Lupton. The company founded by Bill Coors Sr., a member of the brewing family, uses recycled aluminum to create beer cans, caps and alloys.
Waysdorf said aluminum and glass are primarily recycled in Colorado, and aluminum cans are precious in the market.
“Our materials generally stay domestic, and with being landlocked and working with the great partners that we have, we can keep our materials in North America,” she said. “Aluminum is infinitely recyclable, so that’s often made into new cans.”
She also said recycled glass can be logistically challenging to transport, so it’s processed with facilities on the Front Range.
The city’s recycled glass goes to a facility named Glass to Glass, where glass is often turned into bottles and sold to beverage companies. According to the company’s website, the facility is located in Broomfield and breaks recycled glass down into a material named “cullet” so that it can be remelted and molded.
Recycled glass can be put back on a store shelf within 60 days and, like aluminum, is infinitely recyclable, according to the company.
Elizabeth Chapman, executive director of Recycle Colorado, a nonprofit that aims to improve recycling, said other items collected, like paper, plastics and cardboard, are harder to recycle locally and are often worth less in the commodities market.
“Most materials are sent out of state to get recycled,” she said. “Paper largely goes to the central Midwest near the Great Lakes area, cardboard goes to Arizona, and a lot of plastic gets sent overseas to get recycled. Paper is very challenging to recycle here because paper recycling requires a lot of water.”
She also said because of fluctuations in the commodities market for recycled materials, it’s often difficult to predict what the prices for certain materials will be. That instability can make it difficult for companies to invest in recycling.
Waysdorf said whether the city makes money from picking up recycling depends on the commodity market at any given time.
Chapman said Denver’s diversion rate is so low because of a lack of education. She said people often contaminate recycling streams by participating in “wish cycling” or throwing things away that they wish would be recyclable.
“With materials that are put into the recycle bin, the vast majority of that material is recycled,” she said. “Contamination is a problem for sure, but the larger problem is lack of education. Some of the reasons that we get so little material is that it couldn’t be recycled, wasn’t put into the proper bin, or people just don’t care enough to recycle at all.”
