Dive Brief:

• Twin Enviro Services has begun construction on a 6,000-square-foot materials recovery facility to provide an alternative to curbside pickup of single-stream recyclables throughout Northwest, CO. For the town of Steamboat Springs, this will mean no longer shipping recyclables to MRFs in Denver prior to delivery to end-users.
• Twin Enviro employees will sort on a circular line at the new MRF in Milner, CO, and then delivery trucks will backhaul loads to end users.
• The new MRF will receive a $289,283 grant to finance the equipment. Twin Enviro will match the grant with $626,841, including funds for the building and labor, reported Steamboat Today. The facility will be available to all Northwest trash haulers — including Twin Enviro competitors, one of which is Waste Management — as early as March 2016.

Dive Insight:

Twin Enviro offers other services including commercial trash collection, food composting, and 24/7 spill response. However, companies like Twin Enviro are prioritizing ways to make single-stream recycling more efficient, as seen through sizable investments.

This new strategy will not only boost single-stream recycling, but offer an innovative business model where Twin Enviro’s competition in trash collections could tap into the MRF, possibly saving money, as many are hauling loads further now than necessary.

"When you consider the carbon issue, I think we’re doing the right thing," said Twin Enviro Founder Les Liman to Steamboat Today. "It’s a tremendous advantage for the community. We're sending full truckloads to end users, so it doesn’t have to be handled twice."

Competing customer Steve Weinland, owner of Aces High Services in Steamboat, wrote a letter supporting Twin Enviro’s plan. But whether Aces switches from trucking recyclables to the Denver Alpine Waste MRF will depend upon cost.

"It makes economic sense to me, and I’m not crazy about driving trucks to Denver," Weinland said. "If he will charge me somewhere close to what it costs me to take it to Denver, I’d rather take it to him."

Waste Management, the area’s largest handler of single-stream recyclables, hauls collections from Steamboat to its own MRF in Denver, 160 miles away. Jennifer N. Rivera, communications manager for Waste Management in Colorado, said "Waste Management is pleased to see additional options for full processing of single-stream recyclables. We will explore the opportunity to utilize the new MRF when it becomes operational."