Article Contributed on: 6/30/2009 11:14:01 AM
Aurora residents have a new recycling option with the opening of a public recycling center at the Denver Arapahoe Disposal Site landfill.
The center, at 3500 S. Gun Club Road, accepts for free anything that could go in a single-stream bin -- such as aluminum, steel and tin cans, newspapers, magazines, junk mail and plastic bottles -- and charges a fee for other items such as refrigerators, tires and asphalt shingles.
It's no accident that the recycling center is located at the Denver Arapahoe Disposal Site (DADS) landfill. Waste Management, which operates the site that is owned by the City and County of Denver, hopes that items that might normally end up in the landfill will be recycled instead.
"I think the more options you provide the more likely people are to recycle," said Melissa Kolwaite, manager of communications for Waste Management. "Our intention is how can we make this a more effective and efficient system?"
DADS isn't a typical landfill, either -- it's the only landfill gas-to-energy plant in the state.
Instead of burning off the methane gas that is produced as items in the landfill decompose, which is what typcially happens, the gas is captured and fed into a generator that turns it into energy that is fed back into Xcel Energy's grid. Presently, DADS supplies enough energy to power 3,000 homes, but it has room to expand by adding more generators, Kolwaite said.
"Here's an option of looking at landfills in a whole different way," she said. "I think as a state we have come so far -- from individulas to municipalities to the state itself -- we have come really far in terms of our attitude toward sustainibility."
In a statement, Aurora Mayor Ed Tauer said, "Our citizens love to help the environment. This is a new chance for our folks to celebrate green."
Waste Management operates other gas-to-energy plants in the eastern part of the country where the climate is more moist, but the DADS plant is the first in the arid climate of the west. Kolwaite said Waste Management has been "really encouraged" by the results. Waste Management operates nearly 300 landfills in the United States.
The DADS gas-to-energy plant opened in September 2008. The 2,500-acre site is one of the largest landfills in the country in terms of disposal capacity and daily tonnage received, according to Waste Management.
The DADS recycling center is open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
Waste Management also operates a public recycling center at 21705 E. Arapahoe Road at the Saddle Rock Golf Course. That center opened in January 2009.
The DADS recycling center was funded in part by a Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment grant with assistance from the state's Pollution Prevention Advisory Board.
For more information, go to
www.thinkgreen.com or call 720-876-2624.
Think green
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The DADS recycling center is located at 3500 S. Gun Club Road and is open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. For more information, call the DADS landfill gatehouse at 720-876-2650 or 720-876-2624.
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| Items accepted for free | Aluminum cans, pie tins, aluminum foil, steel or tin cans, empty aerosl cans, food and beverage grade glass containers, magazines, office paper, newspapers (including all inserts), junk mail, phone books, brown paper bags, envelpes (with or without windows), paperboard (i.e. cereal boxes), paper towel and toilet paper tubes, flattened cardboard, plastic containers numbered 1-7 |
Other items accepted
| Refrigerators and wall unit air conditioners with Freon - $37.50 each
Refrigerators, stoves/ovens, washers and dryers and water heaters without Freon - $25 each
Tires- $7 each
Scrap metal (including steel and copper) - No charge
Asphalt shingles -$11.75/cubic yard additional pull-off fee, if requested |