Vail to host hard-to-recycle event for electronics, yard waste and more

Have you ever wondered what to do with your outdated computer? Or how to get rid of all those old paper bills and bank statements? Or what to do with that pile of leaves in your yard?

On Friday, Nov. 4, in its sixth annual America Recycles Day celebration, the town of Vail is hosting a free collection event for these and other hard-to-recycle materials.

Hosted in the Ford Park parking lot, the town will offer free collection for electronics, vinyl banners, yard waste, food waste and paper shredding from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

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Electronics will be recycled with the Denver-based Blue Star Recyclers. Paper will be shredded securely by Alliance Moving from Gypsum and then recycled at the Eagle County Materials Recovery Facility. Vail Honeywagon will collect yard and food waste to be composted at its commercial compost facility in Wolcott. Vinyl banners will be repurposed into messenger bags, bike panniers, reusable bags, purses and other useful items through Alchemy Goods and Green Guru based in Boulder. 

Why recycling matters

This event — which is funded by the town’s 10-cent bag fee that the major grocery stores in Vail collect — is part of a national initiative, America Recycles Day, held annually on Nov. 15. The initiative is aimed at bringing awareness around recycling, and spur action on every other day of the year.

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Amelia Kovacs, a sustainability programs associate at Walking Mountains Science Center, said there are three reasons that stand out to her about the importance of recycling.

“Recycling is especially really important in Eagle County because it stops valuable materials from entering the landfill,” she said. “When we bring a can to the landfill, that’s aluminum that we can no longer use for a new aluminum can. Instead, that aluminum can has to use virgin material, emitting more methane and is less resourceful and not as efficient for our planet.”

The emission of methane at the landfill is reason No. 2, Kovacs added.

Methane is produced as a result of organic waste decomposing, and is “a lot more potent a gas than carbon dioxide,” she said.

“When we recycle and we’re diverting it and there’s less recyclable material in the landfills then we’re able to reduce the amount of methane emissions emitting from our landfills,” Kovacs said.

The third reason for Kovacs is job creation.

“Recycling centers are also known to produce nine times more jobs than incineration or landfill centers,” she said.

Currently in Eagle County, 29% of waste created in the county is being diverted from landfills — meaning that either through recycling or composting efforts, 29% of waste is able to be used again. While this is an improvement over previous years, there’s still room for improvement.

In Colorado, according to the 2021 State of Recycling and Composting in Colorado report, 95% of all waste could be diverted but hasn’t been. Of this, 37% could’ve been recycled and 37% could’ve been composted.

Recycling year round

While Friday’s event offers an opportunity for residents to offload some of their hard-to-recycle items, recycling needs to be a year-round endeavor to truly divert this waste. And luckily, Eagle County has many resources to help clear some of the confusion about what and where you can recycle locally.

“Every single resident, whether they know it or not, has access to recycling,” Kovacs said.

Paul Abling, Walking Mountains’ marketing and communications director, said that while everyone has access, there are many different living situations in the county that can make this complex: from single-family homes with curbside pickup to complexes with HOAs or apartment complexes with management companies.

“Not all of those living situations, necessarily at this moment, have recycling on-site,” Abling said. “It takes individual champions in everybody’s situation to make this happen.”

For that, Abling said that Walking Mountains has resources to help enable recycling at whatever facility still needs it.

The other challenging aspect is determining if something can be recycled and where it should go.

“Ever since we were kids we were told, you see a recycling symbol, it’s recyclable, which is the case most times here in Eagle County, ” Kovacs said. “But really what we go by is container shape: so bottles, tubs and jugs are what we look for in recyclable items for your drop site or for your curbside.”

But if it doesn’t have that symbol, it still might be recyclable, just not through that stream. For example, plastic bags cannot be recycled through the Wolcott Recycling Center. It can, however, be recycled at the plastic bag-specific recycling bins at the Walmart in Avon and certain City Markets.

The same goes for electronics, which in Colorado are actually illegal to send to the landfill (and cannot be recycled through your home’s bin). Rather, individuals can take e-waste to the Household Hazardous Waste facility in Wolcott, for 20 cents a pound all year long.

Muddling matters even further, sometimes the items that the Wolcott-based recycling center accepts are subject to change because recycling is a market-based economy, Kovacs said.

“If there isn’t an end market for a material, we aren’t able to recycle it, because there’s no buyer at the end of it,” Kovacs said. “For example, in Eagle County, we used to be able to recycle coffee cups — those fibrous white cups — but we can’t recycle those anymore because we don’t have a buyer anymore and it was too expensive for them to come all the way out to Wolcott and grab that end product.”

There was a recent piece of legislation, however, that Kovacs is hopeful will create more local end markets. The Extended Producer Responsibility Act, as it’s known, will seek to put the responsibility on producers to find an end market for materials they create, establishing a circular economy for more materials.

A current example of this in Colorado is with glass bottles, Kovacs said. Specifically, she said that Coors and New Belgium use recycled glass for their beer bottles.

With all the subtleties and complexities, it can seem overwhelming to know what and where you can recycle items. It’s for this reason that Walking Mountains and the Climate Action Collaborative have created the Waste Wizard app, which you can download to your phone in both English and Spanish. The app allows you to enter any item and see where you can recycle it in Eagle County. If an item is not already in the app, you can request it be added.

Beyond recycling

Recycling itself, while important, is not the end-all-be-all solution to climate change, even though it’s sometimes marketed that way. For that reason, there are many other steps that individuals can take to address this climbing challenge.

“Recycling is extremely important, but what’s even more important is reducing our waste,” Kovacs said. “Waste, in general, is just a sign of inefficiency and when we’re able to recycle and bring things to where they’re supposed to go, I think that that’s just the way we’re supposed to do it, honestly.”

Abling said that waste — and recycling — actually begins at the point of purchase. Becoming a more conscious consumer means making different purchases based on materials. For example, Abling referenced meat packaging at local grocery stores. Rather than purchase from the pre-packaged section — which uses plastic and Styrofoam — the butcher counter uses paper, which can be recycled.

Composting, while another form of recycling, is also critical, Abling and Kovacs said.

“Obviously, we can’t recycle compost but it’s the recycling of organic material, but it is definitely a growing economy here in Eagle County,” Kovacs said.

Vail, Avon and Eagle each have compost drop-off available at their respective recycling drop-off centers. Additionally, Vail Honeywagon can arrange the pickup of organics.

And, climate action goes beyond waste, Kovacs said. While waste plays a large role in local emissions, the greater culprit in Eagle County is transportation and buildings.

Ideas for addressing this include “looking for green commuting whenever possible, carpooling, taking the bus, talking to the HOA to make sure your (building) codes are up to date,” she added. “These are big asks and maybe not as individualized as waste is, but something to keep in mind as we’re thinking about the broader picture.”

“Eagle County (is) making a lot of strides for being more sustainable, providing more recycling opportunities but ultimately we are pretty far away,” Kovacs said. “But we are climbing and we are getting there.”