Winter Park Ski Patrol Director Geoff Anders is a longtime recycler.

He's seen the shift from free recycling at a Fraser Valley drop-off to just one drop-off site left in the county 20 minutes away.

But Anders hasn't changed his recycling habits, and that's largely due to Winter Park Resort's Connexion Recycling Club, designed to provide easier access to recycling for employees.

Anders paid a fee of $20, and as long as he is an active employee, he can bring recycling from his home and dispose of it at the resort's recycling roll-offs.

Sue Johnson of Winter Park's Base Operations says there are presently 85 employees who have signed up to be members of the recycling program, and that number is growing.

Anders considers the program an employee benefit.

“I think its the right thing to do for employees. It makes it as easy as possible to do the right thing,” Anders said.

Recycling incentives

Providing incentive for all of Grand County's business owners to create recycling opportunities for employees — for a fee or as a free benefit — is one immediate idea that came out of a recent two-day “2010 Grand County Recycling and Waste Resources Workshop” that was organized by the sustainability group Infinite West.

Out of the workshop, a Citizen Advisory Board on Recycling and Waste Resources is being formed.

One of its first charges will be to explore creating a local “green star” program, in which business members would be given a sustainability rating and publicly rewarded for recycling efforts, thereby attracting customers who value recycling.

Leading in the charge

According to Karen Bloomfield, who hauls Winter Park's and other commercial recyclables to her sorting plant in Parshall before it is hauled to various recycling locations in Denver, Winter Park Resort's approach to recycling is one of the best examples in the county.

Originally prompted by an employee, the resort has been recycling since the 1980s, but the resort's recycling volume has more than doubled since 2008.

Last year, the resort diverted nearly 50 percent of its trash to recycling.

Through Bloomfield's hauling business to Denver, the resort recycled 96 tons of cardboard taken to International Papers, 17 tons of glass taken to the Rocky Mountain Bottling Co., 28 tons of plastic taken to Eco-cycle, 2 tons of aluminum cans and 40 tons of steel taken to Atlas Metal, and another 52 tons of mixed recycling. Wood waste ended up at A-1 Organics.

“And we continue to reduce more every year,” said Johnson. “We strive to be over a 50 percent diversion rate in 2010.”

There are six 30-yard recycling bins located at the ski area and a 20-yard bin for food waste and other compostables.

The resort has eliminated soft drink paper cups in all food courts and gone to reusable plates and flatware in Sunspot and Moffat Market.

And the resort is experimenting with food waste recycling this year. Waste Management hauls away the resort's compostables to the Summit County Resource Allocation Park, where there is a commercial composting site.

It is striving to reduce energy by controlling lights and heat through an AreaNet program, and when replacing old equipment, the resort purchases equipment that reduces energy consumption whenever possible, Johnson said.

The resort also tries to reuse, such as turning an old bus shelter into an information depot, reusing old Outrigger lift towers to build the Eagle Wind lift, and using old lift haul rope to make fences around the Village Cabriolet.

“We have come a long way from loading a box truck with recyclables we baled ourselves and hauling it to Denver,” Johnson said.

Recycling has value, but it's not free

Jesse McWilliams, owner of Curbside Recycling, sprouted his business out of dissolved recycling opportunities once fully funded by Grand County and town governments.

McWilliams' business offers recycling convenience by picking up recyclables at one's home or business.

He now has nearly 200 customers from Winter Park to Grand Lake to Hot Sulphur Springs.

Opting to recycle is “all about one's priorities,” McWilliams said, like paying for trash pick-up or other utilities.

But McWilliams and others recognize that in a county where residents once thought the former system of recycling was “free,” a paradigm shift is going to take some time.

What people fail to realize, is Grand County recycling was never really “free,” said Executive Director Marjorie Griek of the Colorado Association for Recycling.

Even when Grand County governments subsidized it for years, it was still taxpayers footing the bill, displacing other government services while funding recycling out of general funds.

There are many solid-waste models in the state that create solutions for recycling, some work for some communities, others for others, Griek said.

“I don't think government needs to be in the business of recycling,” she said. “But certainly government needs to be on the political side of recycling and be supportive of it.”

Fundamentally, recycling costs money.

“Even though there is value in recyclables, it isn't enough to cover all costs at this point,” Griek said.

Costs include haulers' trucks, fuel, driver pay and other overhead.

Affected by the world economy, the value of recycle materials plummeted by 80 percent in 2008, and although paper and metals are making a comeback, overall the markets haven't “recovered fully,” Griek said.

But just because recycling hit market bottom, that doesn't mean people should be discouraged from doing it.

“A lot of people in the recycling industry understand those markets. Commodities go up and down, and they plan for those down times with long-term contracts that even-out those big ups and downs,” Griek said.

For a fee

Local recyclers McWilliams and Bloomfield rely on customer fees to make their businesses work. The two business owners are crafting a way to work together, with McWilliams delivering goods to Bloomfield's plant to cut costs.

And although the economics of recycling may appear dismal at times, its proven reduction in greenhouse gasses makes it worth the expense.

“The wonderful part of recycling, is you don't have to do that whole piece of the manufacturing phase, such as mining, extracting and creating pollution,” Griek said.

A 2006 report by the Environmental Protection Agency found that indeed, recycling materials rather than extracting them from virgin feedstocks reduces carbon emissions.

That report and another Oregon analysis called “Greenhouse Gas and Energy Benefits of Recycling” found that it takes at the very least 1,300 miles before the carbon expended to transport a recyclable material and the amount of carbon saved from recycling it are awash.

In other words, McWilliams' and Bloomfields' businesses of transporting recyclable materials to Denver from Grand County does not cancel out the benefits of recycling, according to the studies.

For aluminum, the studies found that a truck can transport it 121,000 miles before it reaches the “break-even” point. By rail, that number of miles increases to 475,000 and by freighter, 538,000 miles.

Glass has the lowest mileage of a break-even point, at 1,300 by truck, 5,100 miles by rail and 5,800 miles by freighter.

So even though it may cost some money out-of-pocket, “I think it's the right thing to do in the world,” Anders said.

— Tonya Bina can be reached at 970-887-3334 ext. 19603 or e-mail tbina@skyhidailynews.com.