Recycling is a key component of any sustainable city. It is an environmentally, economically, socially beneficial policy that can be practiced by anyone and everyone. In Colorado Springs, recycling rates are well below the national average, because of a number of causes, including cheap landfills, privately run waste pick-up, and a lack of available markets for recyclable materials. This proposal presents a two-tiered plan of action that will increase the quantity and quality of recycling in Colorado Springs. The plan will be focused in two key areas: first, education of consumers to encourage recycling and buying recycled products, and second, stimulation of local markets for recycled products. The consumer plan of action will include education programs in all possible areas: schools, churches, homes, and businesses, with the help of non-profit groups, recycling / waste businesses, and the local government. The recycling market plan of action will involve aggressive efforts to attract manufacturers of recycled products to the Colorado Springs area. City agencies will be key in the attraction of these manufacturers, which will provide jobs and economic well being for the city and the recycling process in the city. The recycling market plan of action will also include additional efforts to increase the demand for recycled products, by lobbying for a building ordinance requiring recycled materials in new buildings.

Recycling! We hear about it all the time, but what does it mean for Colorado Springs? Recycling has numerous benefits, environmentally, economically, and socially: it reduces waste, pollution, and resource extraction, it can create jobs and spur new technology, and it is individually empowering. But recycling is not just the act of separating bottles and cans from trash; recycling is a three-tiered triangular cycle requiring products to be set aside, then collected and reprocessed into new materials, and finally bought back by consumers.

In Colorado Springs, recycling is currently at very low levels compared to the rest of the Colorado and the rest of the country. This is primarily because landfills in the area are much cheaper than the national average; also, few local markets for recyclables exist. However, recycling in Colorado Springs does have a future. The growth of the city will lead to more waste produced, and more expensive and harder to find land available for landfills. Recycled products compete with virgin materials extracted from the earth, many of which are non-renewable or depletable materials. Because of the nature of these products, they are increase in price over the long term. As these products increase in price and as population increases, recycled products will see greater, more profitable markets.

Recycling in Colorado Springs can be improved in many sectors, which can be broken down into this flow chart, modified from the original recycling triangle:

COMPANIES RECYCLED PRODUCTS RECYCLED PRODUCTS

Individuals recycle different products, either at residences or in businesses or industries. The products are then collected and processed by recycling companies, often linked to waste / trash companies. Recycling companies then distribute the recyclable products they collect, usually sold to a manufacturer of recycled products, sometimes locally or sometimes internationally. Finally, consumers buy products made with recycled materials.

Improvement need to be made in all of these areas if recycling is to succeed. Individuals need to be encouraged to recycle more and companies need to be encouraged to offer more recycling services. New markets for recycled products need to be explored; these markets must be made more viable by aiding production methods, and more consumers need to be educated about the benefits of recycled products. In Colorado Springs, most waste disposal companies offer recycling services, but not enough customers take the effort to recycle. Companies are not inclined to encourage recycling because of the lack of profitability of the business. Customers need to be encouraged to recycle more, but additional work needs to be done to open new markets for recycled materials. Consumers must be encouraged to buy recycled products, and companies should be aided in the production methods of recycled products. The profitability of the recycling industry can be somewhat improved with local actions, but most improvements need to be made on the national level.

This proposal will focus on three key improvements: local steps that can be made to encourage more individuals to recycle more products, steps to enhance the profitability of the production of recycled products, and steps to encourage the consumption of recycled products. Additional comments will be made about national improvements that can improve the business of recycling.

Recycling has numerous multidisciplinary benefits, environmental, economic, and social. As cities around the world began to accumulate large amounts of waste in the 20^th century, they began to realize that waste was not only ugly, but it was a human health concern. Primarily, recycling reduces the amount of waste in landfills and incinerators. Reducing this waste eliminates land necessary for the storage of this waste, but it also reduces pollution from the contamination that garbage creates. Recent studies have shown that materials take much longer to biodegrade in a landfill than they would naturally, because of the lack of oxygen and disturbed environment. Recycling also reduces air pollution: it reduces nitrate and methane (a greenhouse gas) decomposition from landfills and reduces Carbon Dioxide (also a greenhouse gas) emission from incinerators.

Recycling reduces the need for resource extraction to produce new materials - minerals, timber, and other materials that need to be mined from the Earth. Not only do recycled products preserve the environment by eliminating the direct impacts of this extraction, it eliminates the significant amounts of energy that are consumed to extract these materials. Many materials that are recycled, like paper and aluminum, require huge amounts of energy to mine from the earth and process into usable products. Instead, recycling newspapers, cans, and other materials only requires a fraction of the energy to turn the recyclable into a new product again. Recycling a can uses up to 1/20^th of the energy as it takes to produce a new can. Today, waste management often uses "waste to energy" technology that either burns trash at an incinerator to create power or uses methane trapping at landfills. This technology is somewhat effective, but does not create the same amount of energy that can be saved from recycling.

Recycling can also be economically beneficial to communities. Recycling businesses and manufacturers provide jobs, spur innovation, create new markets for new products, and reduce the costs of landfill dumping and incinerating. All of these qualities act to localize economic benefits: normally a city would import materials and pay for the cost of their disposal and storage. But with recycling, cities can reduce the imports of new materials and reduce the costs of waste storage, instead recycling existing materials into new materials, all done by businesses and manufacturers inside the area of the city rather than outside. Despite all of this, recycling is costly in today’s times — costs much more to collect, sort, and process recyclables than it does to landfill it as waste, not just in Colorado but also in almost all of the U.S. The recycling market is very volatile, but as more products become recyclable and as recycling becomes a bigger business, it will be less costly. Studies show that the more a city recycles, the more cost — effective the recycling program.

Last, recycling is an empowering, environmentally friendly action that every citizen can be part of. There are no personal inconveniences like driving less or turning down the air conditioning in the summer; no costly investments like "environmentally friendly" or "green" products and materials; no membership dues. Recycling is something that everyone can do and feel good about.

The barriers to recycling obviously include the high costs, but these costs are only artificially higher because of the lack of the full cost pricing for resource extraction and waste disposal. Additionally, recycling markets have to compete with the subsidization of the resource extraction industry at the national level. Paper comes from the logging of lands owned and maintained by publicly supported agencies like the Forest Service. Most mining occurs on federal lands, where the Federal Mining Act allows public land and mineral rights to be purchased for 19^th century prices. In addition to all of these subsidies, the resource extraction industry is not required to pay for most of the unintended consequences, or externalities, of their actions, which range from increased waste to endangered species, water pollution, and lost recreational opportunities.

In 1999, U.S. residents, businesses, and institutions produced more than 230 million tons of Municipal Solid Waste. However, 64 million tons of materials are recycled, 28% of the solid waste of the country. Of the rest of the waste, 15% is burned at incinerators and the remaining 57% are buried at landfills. Different materials are recycled at different levels, but most of the waste in the U.S. is a material that can be easily recycled (see graphs).

Recyclable products are recycled at different levels for many reasons, the most significant one being cost. Glass has always been expensive to produce and ship, as well as being expensive to recycle, and glass recycling rates usually depend on bottle deposit laws that exist in only a handful of states. Glass production has decreased dramatically in the U.S. in recent years, mainly as a result of increased plastic container use, another somewhat recyclable product. There are seven common different types of plastic in production, marked with a number 1-7 on the bottom of the container. The lower the number, like plastic soda bottles, the easier it is to recycle. Higher number plastics are rarely recycled. While about 40% of plastic soda bottles are recycled in the U.S., only about 10% of overall plastic is recycled. Aluminum, the material that makes up most cans, is a metallic element abundant in the earth’s crust. However, aluminum production requires large amounts of energy and is harmful to the environment. Recycled aluminum is easily converted into new cans, greatly saving energy, and thus markets for recycled aluminum are some of the most profitable ones in the recycling business. Paper waste is the largest component of total national waste, and along with aluminum, create the most reliable and profitable markets in recycling. There are more than 50 different grades of paper, and all must be recycled differently. Newspapers are commonly recycled at residences, while other forms of paper are usually only recycled at businesses.

Colorado recycles at a rate of 10-19% of total waste, well below the national average. However, a potential exists, as Colorado has more curbside recycling programs than most of the rest of the intermountain west, although much less than eastern U.S. states. Colorado incinerates less than 15 of its waste, instead landfilling 80-90% of waste. In Colorado, Governor Romer created a task force in 1989 to reduce the amount of waste in the state by 50% by 2000. Clearly, this goal will fail to be met, and Governor Owens has cut funding to recycling programs and departments. However, Colorado still offers tax credits for investment in some recycling technologies.

It is extremely difficult to estimate the total amount of waste produced and recycled in Colorado Springs, because numerous private companies collect trash and recyclables, rather than the city or county contracting waste and recycling. Additionally, the EPA does not keep data for cities. Most of the waste in the Colorado Springs area is dumped at one of three landfills in the county, and some is exported to Pueblo. Landfill space around Colorado Springs costs about $15 per ton, compared to rates of upwards of $100 per ton in parts of California and the east coast. Colorado Springs also pays very low tipping costs when we export trash to Pueblo, about $6 compared to over $100 in many areas of the country.

In the Colorado Springs area, several private companies collect waste, and most of the big companies - Waste Management — Recycle America, Team Green, Bestway, and U.S. Waste include recycling programs in their service. Waste America, which claims to be the largest waste collector in the area, serving about 50,000 residences, collects various kinds of paper and cardboard, aluminum, tin, glass and plastic one and two. They currently charge $2.50 a month to collect recyclables in its curbside pick-up service, and charges a flat rate of $10 a month for trash pick-up. They estimate that 40% of customers pay for the recycling service. Waste America is associated with Recycle America, who receives and sorts the recyclable materials. Recycle America pays money for aluminum and paper products that are either dropped off by individuals or by other waste companies like Bestway or Team Green. Recycle America does not pay money for glass and plastic, because these products are worth very little money in resale. As with most recyclers in Colorado and the rest of the U.S., markets for recycled products are scarce and often unprofitable. Many markets lie overseas in Asia, or in Mexico and South America. These markets are often better than U.S. markets because of the higher costs of resource extraction and the lack of federal subsidies in these countries. The only product that is processed in large volumes inside Colorado is glass, which is sold to and processed at the Coors brewing plant in Golden. Recycle America said that recycling is a somewhat profitable business for them, and indicated that they were in the business to make a profit as opposed to a customer service.

U.S. Waste, the second largest trash collector in the area, collects aluminum, tin, plastic one and two, newspaper, and magazines (also cardboard at businesses only). They collect recyclables with a separate truck, and while they offer waste pick up all around the Colorado Springs area, they exclude recycling pick up from outer areas such as Woodland Park and Fountain. U.S. Waste charges an extra $1.75 per month to pick up recyclables, and they estimate that about half of possible recycling customers pay for the service. After collecting recyclables, U.S. Waste sorts them and sends them out of the city to various mills and manufacturers. U.S. Waste was not able to comment about the profitability of their recycling service; they were not able to comment whether they recycle in order to make a profit or simply to serve customers.

Bestway, the third biggest waste company in the area, serves about 18,000 residences. They offer recycling services free with their trash pick-up, and have been doing so for 10-12 years. They estimate that about half of customers take the effort to separate recyclables. They pick up newspaper, plastic, and aluminum, and also pick up paper from businesses. They sell their recyclables to Recycle America, except for aluminum, which is sold elsewhere. They said that recycling was not a profitable enterprise for them, rather they offered recycling as more of a customer service.

Team Green, another major waste company in the city, serves about 10,000 residences, and also offers free recycling service. They recycle aluminum, tin and newspaper, and have been doing so for about 6 years. They sell tin and aluminum to various scrap yards around the city, and sell newspaper to Recycle America. They say that about 20-25% of their customers take the effort to recycle. Team Green used to include glass and plastic in their recycling service, but recently cut it because it was costing money. They say that they receive a little revenue for their recyclables, but overall it is a losing financial proposition. They say that they provide recycling as more of a community service than a financial enterprise.

Yard waste and food waste make up about 10-12% of total national waste. While about 45% of total yard waste is recycled as compost, food waste is rarely recycled. In Colorado Springs, the El Paso County Government collects yard waste once a week at one drop-off site in the city.

Other recyclable materials, like tires, motor oil, batteries, and other auto products are extremely toxic and harmful to the environment if dumped and allowed to runoff into waterways. One gallon of motor oil can pollute 200,000 gallons of water. These materials are often labeled solid chemical waste, and are usually treated specially, often by city and county governments. These materials are often recycled at very high rates. El Paso County also collects solid chemical waste such as tires, paint, batteries, and other auto products, collected at one drop-off point in the city, twice a year.

Elsewhere in Colorado, recycling is conducted similar to how it is in the Springs. In Denver, numerous companies pick up trash; TRI-R, a recycling company, processes most of the recyclables as Recycle America does in Colorado Springs. In Boulder, EcoCycle, a non-profit organization, processes recyclables that are picked up throughout the neighborhoods by various waste companies.

Colorado recycles at much lower levels than most areas of the country. By 1996, several cities around the country recycle half of their total waste, while many more cities recycled 40% of their waste. While Colorado recycles 10-20% of their total waste, other states recycle more than 40% of their waste (see graph). Many of these cities are able to recycle all at these levels while not increasing and sometimes even lowering costs for customers. In many other cities, recycling is included as a service by the city or county government, and customers pay for recycling in their taxes. These public recycling programs usually pick up a greater range of recyclable materials than what is offered in Colorado. However, with these public programs, households are basically required to recycle. City and county governments usually lose money recycling, but they are faced with high landfill costs and difficulties trying to build new ones. Many of these cities adopt "pay as you throw" programs, where residences are charged by volume for their trash pick up, creating an incentive to recycle.

In these other cities, recycling markets are often closer in proximity and more accessible, cutting costs. Also, the conservative politics of Colorado and especially Colorado Springs has limited the influx of environmentally progressive policies such as recycling. However, the primary difference between recycling in Colorado and recycling in other cities is landfill cost and availability. East coast and some west coast cities have to recycle because they are running out of landfill space. When landfills become scarce, they also become expensive. Additionally, landfills were the original N.I.M.B.Y.; locating new landfills is extremely difficult in crowded cities and suburban areas.

There are four areas in the recycling process that need to be performed effectively if recycling is to succeed as a whole. As mentioned earlier, efforts in Colorado Springs will focus on three of the areas: recycling practices of individuals, production of recycled products, and consumption of recycled products. Most waste disposal companies in the city offer recycling services; most do not have the money to spend on education programs, and they only need more markets to sell their recyclable products to. Efforts need to be focuses simultaneously on consumer education programs and stimulation of the local recycling market. If thousands of consumers recycle products in Colorado Springs, but no effort is taken to open new markets for recycling, the recycled products will go to waste. If recycling companies offer more recycling services, or if recycled product manufacturers look for new markets, neither will be effective unless matched with equal effort by consumers to recycle more and buy more recycled products. This proposal will work simultaneously with consumer education and recycling markets.

Part of the first step, individuals will be educated about the benefits and the ease of recycling. If properly educated, consumers will realize that the practice of sorting recyclable materials will improve the environment for present and future generations, that it will provide local economic benefits, that it is simple, and that it is empowering. When consumers realize this, they will recycle in greater numbers and quantities. This demand will encourage trash companies to offer recycling services for customer service reasons, if not for profitability reasons, as studies show that the more a city recycles, the more cost — effective the recycling programs are. The recycling education programs will also focus on buying recycled products as well as recycling waste, seeking to close the loop and keep the cycle in recycle.

Recycling education programs need to come from a broad coalition of support and reach an audience of the entire city. In the past, Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful has run recycling education programs; today, the El Paso County Government is the sole provider of any kind of detailed recycling education programs. These groups, as well as most other non-profit groups and recycling businesses cite lack of money as the hindrance to greater education programs. This proposal will address this problem by seeking a broad base of funding before recycling programs commence. The recycling education part of this program will require the majority of the funding of the Independence Community Fund grant. Additional funding of these programs would come from a combination of the city, county, and state government agencies, trash companies, non-profit groups, or other external sources like grants, charities, and foundations. Recycle America will be a key leader of the recycling education programs, as it will prove to be economically beneficial for them.

Consumers will be educated through simple grassroots work: public announcements, distributed written information, and recycling programs in schools, churches, homes, and businesses. Churches and schools will be key to the recycling education programs, as will be able to reach a great audience at a very low cost. These recycling education programs will work with numerous non-profit groups in the area, and will be a key component of the recycling symposium for spring 2002, planned by the Clean Air Campaign. Businesses can be encouraged to recycle in greater quantities with the same methods as listed above, but also with the hints that environmentally friendly practices can be used as a marketing tool. Statistics show that 95 percent of customers prefer to do business with environmentally responsible companies.

The second part of this proposal focuses on the need to open and expand markets for recyclables. Most of this work needs to be done on the national level: the first target is to remove the subsidies for the virgin resource extraction industry and level the playing field for recycled products. However, there are a few steps that can be taken locally. The first step to increasing demand will come from the recycling education programs, which will focus on buying recycled products as well as recycling waste. But also, recycling is a source of jobs and economic well being for Colorado Springs. Recycling is a $236 billion, 1 million-job national industry, and it is an economic force in some areas of the country like the upper Midwest; this proposal will simply seek to expand it to Colorado.

Some waste companies in Colorado Springs complain about the lack of recycling markets and the unprofitability of collecting recyclables. However, organized, larger scale recycling companies in Colorado are finding recycling a profitable business. Recycle America, the largest recycler in Colorado Springs, TRI-R, one of the largest recyclers in Denver, and Eco-Cycle, the dominant recycler in Boulder, all find recycling somewhat profitable. This leads to the conclusion that although it is difficult, recycling can be made a profitable business, especially if it is conducted a larger scale. Additional cost cutting techniques can be made by improving pick-up routes — companies or neighborhoods should collaborate so that one company would serve each neighborhood, rather than having three or four trucks travel one little street in one morning.

But instead of these simple persuasion techniques, the majority of this sector of the proposal will focus on proactive steps that will be taken to increase the viability of the recycling at a local level. Colorado Springs will aggressively seek manufacturers of recycled products to locate in the area. This would provide jobs and income for the region, as recycled products are sold around the country and around the world. This kind of economic recruitment is exactly the kind of work practiced by the Colorado Springs Economic Development Corporation, who seeks manufacturers and businesses to locate and sell products outside of the area. First, support from this organization will be created, as well as support from environmental groups and existing recyclers like Recycle America that want to see accessible, nearby manufacturers like this who will buy their products. Once recycled product manufacturers are contacted, the Colorado Springs Office of Economic Development and the Chamber of Commerce provide assistance for new businesses and industries as well as various forms of tax breaks and other incentives. Companies and manufacturers are attracted to the Colorado Springs area because of the high quality of life and the educated, high-tech workforce. Current trends in globalization and free trade will encourage local recycling manufacturers, as tariffs lower and international market for products made with recycled materials become more accessible.

Additional effort will increase the local demand for recycled products. Building ordinances could be passed to require a certain amount of recycled materials in new construction. This effort would require a complex planning process to garner support necessary for lobbying city government, where the policy would have to happen. First, contact should be made with Built Green Colorado, an organization that promotes environmentally friendly construction and includes building with recycled materials in their Built Green "checklist". This established group will help to spark a coalition of support for this policy — first, environmental groups and the recycling manufacturers that would be providing the materials for recycled building materials, and last, the support of the building industry. Once the support is reached, the coalition would lobby city government to pass this ordinance. The ordinance will be supported by the fact that it will create a market for the products that are already being recycled in the city rather than relying on foreign products, as well as the fact that building products made with recyclable materials are often more durable and last longer than original materials.

The coalition will create a foundation of support and marketing for the construction of buildings with recycled materials, and will be able to advance the idea as a voluntary measure if with or without the ordinance. Ordinance or not, businesses can be encouraged to use recycled products as an environmentally friendly marketing tool, just as they can be encouraged to recycle their waste as a marketing tool. Especially, tourism businesses, a significant economic sector of Colorado Springs, can be targeted to use recycled products as an environmentally friendly marketing tool. U.S. tourists travel to Costa Rica and around the world looking for eco-tourism, one of the fastest growing sectors of tourism- this will give them a chance to find it in Colorado.

Recycling in Colorado Springs is something that will be difficult to come by. It will take an intense, concentrated effort of non-profit groups, businesses, governments, churches, and schools. The key to making it happen will not be the traditional efforts of encouraging consumers to recycle in greater numbers, although this will help. The key to the future of recycling in Colorado Springs is to create demand for recyclable materials: consumer demand, attracting recycling businesses, and changing building practices.

be taken at the national level. The federal government needs to stop subsidizing the extraction of virgin resource materials, like timber and minerals. In addition to these subsidies, the resource extraction industry must be required to pay for the externalities of their actions, which range from increased waste to endangered species, water pollution, and lost recreational opportunities.

Nevertheless, there still is work that can be done in Colorado Springs to make recycling succeed, and this proposal outlines the steps that should be taken. Recycling in Colorado Springs can be sold as a plan for the future, as the city plans to grow significantly in the next century. Recycling today can be sold as a way to prevent the landfill and incinerator problems that east coast cities face. Finally, the recycling industry can be presented as a market in which Colorado can become a national and international leader.

Spring 2002:

Gather support for Recycling Education programs: get funding and contact all parties necessary for support — Non profit groups (work with the Recycling Symposium of the Clean Air Campaign), School board, selected churches, Colorado Dept. of Education, Colorado Springs City Government, Recycle America.

Summer — Winter 2002:

Enact Recycling Education programs: in schools, churches, homes, and businesses.

Spring 2003:

Re-evaluate support for Recycling Education: meet with initial sponsors from spring 2002 and re-evaluate the status of recycling and the successes / failures of initial education drive.

Summer — Winter 2003:

Enact second round of Recycling Education. Continue the initial enthusiasm of the first round, but make improvements. Make Recycling Education an annual program. Correlate education programs with new recycling businesses and ordinances.

Spring 2002:

A. Create partnership with C.S. Econ. Dev. Corp., city gov. and non-profits to look for recycling businesses.

B. Create partnership with Built Green Colorado to plan steps to encourage building with recyclable materials.

Summer — Winter 2002:

A. Aggressively seek out recycling businesses to re-locate to C.S. area.

B. Gather coalition of support to lobby for building ordinance requiring recyclable materials — first contact recycled product manufacturers, then environmental groups, last, building industry.

Spring 2003:

A. Contact recycling businesses, offer tax incentives, subsidies, other techniques to lure businesses to C.S. area. Work with C.S. office of Econ. Dev.

B. Lobby City Gov. to enact building ordinance requiring recyclable materials.

Summer — Winter 2003:

A. Recycling businesses locate in C.S. area, provide a coalition of support to aid the new businesses; correlate with education programs

B. Continue to lobby City Gov. to enact recyclable material building ordinance (politics works slower than business); correlate with education programs.