Recycle Colorado (2026)

25/08/2026

The Greater Colorado Council hosted 31 of our closest friends and members in Breckenridge on July 31 for a summer field trip! ☀️ 😎

This interactive tour first brought us along the multiuse path to 106West Logistics’s E-Delivery Loading Dock where Jason Barber highlighted their e-delivery program which centralizes large freight deliveries before goods move through downtown on smaller electric vehicles.

From there, a town-owned waste enclosure was scoped out before tucking into The Crown for some coffee and snacks. Retrocycle partners with the café for their borrow-and-return system for beverages. Joey Baugh and Meredith (MK) Katz" gave us the scoop on how the "Colorado Cup" movement has been going as they continue to serve and fill the cups of Coloradans visiting the central mountains.

One stroll and car ride later the team arrived at the Summit County, Colorado Resource Allocation Park (SCRAP) where Bill Schenk have us an inside look at the facility and some of its recycling and organics operations. SCRAP is the county’s integrated landfill, recycling, composting, and materials recovery system.

Madelyn Green and Kaite Cummings with High Country Conservation Center (HC3) joined us at SCRAP to share more about their partnership and mutualistic support of each other’s programs. HC3 is the County’s non-profit organization that manages the County’s energy conservation, waste reduction and diversion and climate control programs. They just celebrated their 50th anniversary!

Before we all went on our merry way, Diane Calvin and Hallie Jaeger Kremske shared all the awesome achievements they have accomplished over the past year with their mission to divert valuable food from the landfill and food resource management at CAFE Food Rescue.

If you would like to join the awesome members of the Greater Colorado Council, visit our website: https://www.recyclecolorado.org/join-recycle-colorado/. This is an opportunity to collaborate with GCC and all that is happening throughout the State.

14/08/2026

This week we got to tour Nederland Transfer Station (NTS). We had Billy as our amazing tour guide and Meghan Wiebe as our host. Altogether we learned so much about their small but mighty mountain operations:

🤎 NTS is the proud operators of a Green Mountain Technologies, Inc. in-vessel compost container. Residents bring their 5 gallon buckets full of organic material and food scraps to the site and dump them into a larger trash cart before being added to the compost mix.
🌲 Residents can leave with a bucket full of free, finished compost. Typical applications in the mountains include top dressing, planting and landscaping. NTS does not give away their wood chips because of the potential for invasive beetles to be spread.
💦 NTS's compost recipe is a sustainable balance of food scraps and wood chips from the neighboring lumber recovery yard. Residents drop off lumber from fire mitigation projects which get chipped and brought over. Contrary to what you might think based on Colorado dry conditions, no additional water has been added to their compost mix until just this week!
🐻 While bears are generally attracted to smells of food scraps, NTS has not had any issues with intruders. The same wood chips used in the compost mixture are used as a natural filter for any aromas emanating from the composting process.
🏗️ The Dumptique offers residents opportunities to offload unneeded building and home materials for someone else to use in a project for free (can you say circularity?). Be sure to check out the newly built garage and the possibilities inside next time you head up to Ned!

Thank you for showing us the possibilities for sustainable diversion for smaller mountain communities, Nederland!

03/08/2026

Safely dispose of your leftover paint and help keep the community eco-friendly. With the Denver Fire Dept Foundation, The City & County of Denver, & Ball Arena. - Circular.eco

31/07/2026

We are proud to be a new Colorado Green Business Network member!

The voluntary program focuses on advancing sustainability and reducing impact. The program represents a diverse array of businesses across the state — large and small. By joining, your business will gain access to funding resources, a support system, mentorship, technical assistance, and statewide recognition.

The Colorado Green Business Network within the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has recognized us as a Bronze level CGBN Certified business! We are so excited to continue improving on our sustainability goals.

Learn how you can also become a member by visiting cdphe.colorado.gov/co-green-business.

29/07/2026

As we close out this year's Summit for Recycling recap posts, there's no better way to end than by celebrating the people who remind us why this work matters.

Hosting our Awards Dinner at the Butterfly Pavilion couldn't have been more fitting. Butterflies may seem small, but through every flutter they pollinate, strengthen ecosystems, and create change far beyond what we can see. Our award recipients do the same. Through their leadership, innovation, advocacy, volunteerism, and dedication, they create ripple effects that strengthen communities and move Colorado toward a more sustainable future.

Like butterflies, they remind us that transformation doesn't happen overnight. It happens through persistence, collaboration, and the courage to keep moving forward even when progress feels slow.

Congratulations to our 2026 Award Recipients:
🦋 Summit Theme Award – Sustaining Ourselves, Sustaining Colorado: Anna Perks, Perks Deconstruction & Perks Reclaimed
🦋 Outstanding Business Innovator: Pretred, Inc.
🦋 Outstanding Government Leader & Program: Nicole Manesh, City of Longmont
🦋 'Mereth Meade' Outstanding Volunteer of the Year: Avery Lemons, Eco-Cycle
🦋 'Mereth Meade' Outstanding Volunteer of the Year: Benjamin Cavarra, Steamboat Ski & Resort
🦋 'Mereth Meade' Outstanding Volunteer of the Year: High Country Recycling
🦋 'Cara Russell' Rising Star: Sampson Brozek, WM
🦋 Recycler of the Year: Coryanne Mansell, Resource Recycling Systems (RRS)
🦋 Lifetime Achievement: Senator Lisa Cutter
🦋 Compost Champion: Clinton Sander, A1 Organics
🦋 Advocate of the Year: Evan Kruse, Diverse
🦋 Esteemed Exhibitor: The Colorado Composting Council

To each of our recipients: thank you for inspiring this community. Your work reaches farther than you may ever know, and Colorado is stronger because of it. Congratulations, and thank you for helping all of us continue Sustaining Ourselves, Sustaining Colorado. See you all in 2027!

28/07/2026

‼️ Now Accepting Nominations for our Board of Directors ‼️

Each fall, our members nominate and elect diverse, welcoming candidates for our board of director election to help lead our membership. We have 5 spots open on our board of directors. Nominate yourself or a connection within your network that would be a valuable addition to our board.

Nominations are due by August 12th. Please review the requirements and commitments on our website before submitting a nomination: https://www.recyclecolorado.org/board-of-directors-election

27/07/2026

The heart of the Summit for Recycling isn't the venue, the sessions, or even the agenda. It's the people willing to stand up and share what they've learned.
To every speaker, panelist, moderator, and facilitator: Thank You!

Thank you for being vulnerable enough to share your successes, your challenges, and even the lessons that came from things not going as planned. It takes courage to stand in front of a room full of peers with different backgrounds and perspectives, and you did it with generosity, authenticity, and passion.

Our attendees didn't just leave with new insights, they left feeling connected to something bigger. You inspired conversations, challenged assumptions, sparked new ideas, and reminded all of us that none of us are doing this work alone.

A special thank you to our keynote speaker, Kelly Kandra Hughes, whose message perfectly embodied this year's theme, Sustaining Ourselves, Sustaining Colorado. Kelly reminded us that by investing in ourselves, our leadership, and our resilience, we're better equipped to create lasting change for our communities and our state. Thank you for setting the tone for an incredible Summit.

Thank you for embracing the fun... Whether you wore a costume, participated in an activity, shared a difficult lesson, or answered one more audience question, you helped create an experience that was engaging, welcoming, and memorable.

Finally, thank you to Republic Services for sponsoring Ink Factory's live graphic recording. These incredible illustrations captured everything from the smallest insights to the biggest themes, creating a lasting visual reminder of the ideas, innovation, and collaboration that filled this year's Summit.

To every speaker: thank you for lending your voice to this community. You are what makes the Summit worth coming back to every year.

24/07/2026

The Summit for Recycling wouldn't exist without the organizations that choose to invest in Colorado's recycling, composting, and circular economy. Our sponsors show up. They bring their teams, share their expertise, answer tough questions, support new ideas, and help create a space where our industry can learn from one another. Year after year, that commitment is what makes the Summit unique.

💚 Thank you to C3 for once again being our biggest Summit supporter. Your team consistently brings the largest presence to the conference, and your willingness to engage with attendees, share knowledge, and champion waste diversion across Colorado has an impact far beyond the exhibit hall.

♻️ Thank you to the Colorado Circular Action Alliance (CAA) for spending countless hours answering questions about Producer Responsibility. Your transparency, patience, and leadership have helped attendees better understand one of the most significant advancements for recycling in Colorado, and we appreciate everything your team is doing to make the program successful.

🎨 Thank you to Republic Services for sponsoring Ink Factory and helping us capture the energy and ideas from our sessions through live graphic recording. These illustrations allow the conversations and inspiration from the Summit to live on long after the event ends (see graphics in the next post!).

🤝 Thank you to all of our member and sponsor exhibitors. Your booths became classrooms, networking spaces, and problem-solving hubs. Every conversation you had helped attendees discover new ideas, partnerships, and solutions that strengthen recycling and waste diversion throughout Colorado.

🏆 Thank you to our Awards sponsors for making it possible to recognize the people and organizations moving Colorado forward. Celebrating innovation, leadership, and dedication reminds us why this work matters and inspires all of us to keep pushing toward a more sustainable future.

To every sponsor, exhibitor, member, volunteer, speaker, and attendee: thank you for believing in this community and showing up. We couldn't do it without you.

09/07/2026

Thank you to all of you who supported our Summit tours this year and showed our attendees the amazing possibilities Colorado has to offer for recycling, composting and beyond.

🏜️ We kicked off the tours with a stroll up to Red Rocks where attendees were able to see the behind the scenes material sorting. Having the incredible infrastructure and community partners is what makes it possible for them to divert a large portion of their waste.

🤎 Organics was an incredible experience for members, taking them through a Denver Urban Gardens Food Forest. Food forests provide community members access to green spaces to learn and enjoy locally grown food. Our next stop took folks to Compost Colorado where we got to see CoCo’s in-vessel composter. From there, the group stopped at We Don’t Waste which hosts zero waste cooking classes, mobile food markets and rescues food for community members.

🦬 Attendees who headed back to school got to see the best of CU’s sustainability. They first stopped at the ROC which is the nation’s oldest collegiate recycling programs. Next, attendees learned that Folsom Field Stadium posted a 68% handsorted diversion rate for 2025 gamedays & events. The tour was topped off with a stop to the Green labs, a sustainable laboratory showcasing recycling best practices.

♻️ Hosting the Summit in Westminster came with its perks, like being able to showcase SustainAbility & Ridwell. SustainAbility is a small-scale single stream and hard-to-recycle public drop-off site that showcased their dual mission of hiring people who face significant barriers to employment and offering recycling and reuse pathways for complex materials. Ridwell was next on the Westminster stops, showcasing their fantastic plastic and household item recycling capabilities.

🏗️ Attendees apart of the Reclaim tour got to visit Perks Reclaimed Warehouse, where building materials from deconstruction projects around the Boulder & Denver area are sold to be used in new construction projects. Continuing down reclaim lane, attendees got a behind the scenes look of the donation, sorting, production and logistics processes from the Goodwill of Colorado team. Hello circularity!

07/07/2026

In early June we gathered to learn, hold space for one another, and remind ourselves why this work matters at the 2026 Summit for Recycling conference.

Together, we embraced big ideas and honest conversations, made new connections, celebrated old friendships, and settled into the kind of community that can only be built when passionate people come together with a shared purpose.

This year’s theme, Sustaining Ourselves, Sustaining Colorado, invited us to reflect on the importance of caring for our communities while also caring for ourselves and each other along the way. We hope you left the Summit feeling inspired, grounded, supported, and re-energized for the important work ahead.
Thank you for bringing your heart and your recycling nerd energy to this community and for helping make this year’s Summit so meaningful.

💚 Brandy Moe, Executive Director, Recycle Colorado

✨ 2026 Summit Highlights ✨
♻️ We set a new record on Summit attendance with 350 attendees joining us in Westminster this year!
♻️ Scraps provided on-site waste diversion throughout all of the Summit events, diverting 377 lbs. of food waste from the landfill.
♻️ Honored 12 award recipients at our annual Awards Dinner at the beautiful Butterfly Pavilion.
♻️ Provided 15 students and blooming professionals the opportunity to attend the Summit through our Future Leaders Scholarship program

Recycle Colorado

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