Recycling can feel pointless. Here are Colorado companies changing that.

The Colorado Sun – July 15, 2024

The article highlights four companies involved with the Circular Economy Development Center: Pretred, Driven Plastics, Tersus Solutions and Direct Polymers. The following is an excerpt from the article.

“The challenge is quantity,” said Laurie Johnson, who founded Circular Colorado in 2021. “Colorado has so many materials with that issue. We’re just not that big to command large-scale solutions that reduce the cost of processing.”

It’s only been one year and Johnson is juggling eight projects.

She’s prioritized materials that have been more challenging than mattresses to recycle: plastics, tires, textiles and roof shingles. Those have a higher tonnage ending up in Colorado landfills than mattresses, which she ranked as fifth on her list. She’s found many interesting processors here. She’s still working on shingles. There’s also a plan to set up a rail and trucking system to help recyclers access unwanted material collected from around the state and beyond — or haul stuff like mattresses on a more environmentally-friendly rail route to California.

“We’re brokering not only the relationships (between recyclers) but helping them with locations, the permits, the strategy,” Johnson said. “It’s like we’re putting all the players on the team together and then saying, ‘OK, you’re the quarterback, you’re the center, you’re the receiver.’ And then we go to the field.”

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