WM, the largest trash company in Colorado, on Thursday marked the opening of a $110 million facility in Aurora that will handle 175,000 tons of garbage a year as Colorado’s aggressive statewide recycling program launches later this year.
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The expanded program is intended to improve the state’s recycling rate — one of the worst in the nation — and it will be paid for by the companies that create packaging waste, such as Amazon and its massive volumes of cardboard boxes.
The Producer Responsibility Program was approved last year by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, and it is expected to provide free curbside recycling to more than 700,000 homes and businesses statewide by 2035.
“We knew it was coming, so that was part of the driving force in our decision to build this,” said Mark Snedecor, director of business development and infrastructure planning for WM, formerly Waste Management.
WM held a grand opening Thursday for its Denver East Recycling Facility & Hauling Site in Aurora with fanfare that included a visit from Gov. Jared Polis as well as the Colorado Rockies’ mascot, Dinger. The building has two miles of conveyor belts and massive machines that can sort plastic bottles, aluminum cans, cardboard and other garbage using light sensors, magnets, air and human hands.
The site also includes a station for WM’s trucks, which are fueled by compressed natural gas rather than diesel.
The company is planning to build an on-site plant that will convert methane from its nearby landfill to natural gas, said Tara Hemmer, WM’s chief operating officer. It will be able to create enough natural gas to power the equivalent of 15,000 homes.
WM needed to upgrade its Colorado recycling capabilities because the population is growing and the industry has changed, Snedecor said.
For example, the company handles less newsprint while cardboard boxes pile up with the surge of Amazon and other home-delivery services, he said. Because cardboard is heavier than newsprint, the machines need to be built differently to handle the weight.
The facility’s machines can also strip off the shrink-wrapped labels that cover drink bottles and other food products, then bundle that waste. For now, that material has no other uses, but WM is working to figure out how to reuse it, Snedecor said.
Polis, who signed a bill in 2022 that created the expanded statewide program, lauded the new facility as an example of how environmental sustainability can become an economic opportunity.
“Garbage is an opportunity,” he said.
The statewide expansion will be funded by fees assessed to the companies that create packaging waste, and it is overseen by a Circular Action Alliance, which sets the fees in cooperation with the Department of Public Health and Environment.
The amount companies will be charged depends on how much waste they create and how much money they make.
“What that’s meant to do is to encourage producers to make their packaging easy to recycle,” said Brandy Moe, Recycle Colorado’s executive director.
The first round of fees was due by June 1. The health department is considering a change in how it calculates the revenue that would exempt a company from mandatory participation in the program, according to its website.
State regulators, trash companies, packaging companies and others have spent years planning for the expanded program, Moe said. It will roll first out to single-family homes before expanding to apartment complexes and commercial sites.
Every home and business in the state should have curbside recycling by 2035.
The rollout will include a public education campaign to help people understand what they can recycle.
“It’s about to go live,” Moe said. “All the things are about to come together. There’s going to be a learning curve.”
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