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Bikes, Brews, and Bottles: Fort Collins Rallies Local Businesses to Recycle
The City of Fort Collins, CO, is running an innovative recycling program to collect beer and other glass bottles from participating bars and restaurants in the Old Town district. With the help of New Belgium Brewing Company and Rob’s Bike Courier Service, the City’s Brown Bottle Recycling Program deploys bicycle couriers equipped with specially designed trailers to collect glass bottles from local businesses and deliver them to New Belgium for recycling.
Susie Gordon of Fort Collins’ Natural Resources Department enlisted the help of the New Belgium Brewing Company, a local brewery, with the City of Fort Collins to devise a collaborative recycling program that uses available resources and infrastructure to make it easy for local businesses to participate.
Here’s how it works: Participating bars and restaurants in the Old Town district place their empty glass containers in 65-gallon polycarts (think trashcans on wheels). Rob’s Bike Courier Service picks up and delivers the filled polycarts to New Belgium. The brewery then trucks the material to Rocky Mountain Bottle Company in Golden, CO, to be recycled.
In a college town like Fort Collins, where the bottles can add up quickly, the effort is paying off big for local businesses and recycling proponents. Since launching in fall 2004, 14 businesses have signed up and approximately 4,000 pounds of glass are collected each month. The direct benefit to businesses is the reduction in waste removal costs.
According to Rob Martin, of Rob’s Bike Courier Service, his company transports anywhere from 900 to 2,000 pounds of glass a week. For his services, Rob receives a flat fee from New Belgium, which in turn takes in $50 per ton of brown glass delivered to Rocky Mountain Bottle Company, a subsidiary of Coors Brewing Company.
City officials hope to eventually enroll every bar and restaurant—more than 40 businesses—in the 40-square-block Old Town area to participate.
Fort Collins’ Brown Bottle Recycling Program exemplifies the types of initiatives encouraged by our Resource Conservation Challenge within the national priority area of Municipal Solid Waste and Recycling.
