Colorado College has long been in collaboration with Bestway Disposal to facilitate the college’s recycling, compost, and trash needs. Bestway has been particularly involved in Recyclemania, a competition that is currently taking place on campus to measure how sustainably the school is disposing of waste.
Alicia Archibald of Bestway Disposal collaborates with CC on most of their programs.
“I collaborate with Colorado College through providing tours of our facilities, participating in Campus Sustainability Council, and giving presentations when requested,” said Archibald.
Although Bestway is in charge of picking up waste from the college, the trash and compost is then taken to different facilities to be processed. The recycling, on the other hand, is taken to the Bestway Disposal’s local Material Recovery Facility. Compost collected at CC goes to a compost site located in southeast Colorado Springs. Compostable materials include food scraps, paper napkins, cups, and plates.
Once the materials reach the facility, they are ground up and combined with water to create a soil amendment that is sold commercially.
Trash, like plastic bags, soda bottles, plastic utensils, and Styrofoam are sent to the Colorado Springs Landfill to be buried.
The recycling system is more complicated. Once the paper products, aluminum foil, and other recyclables travel to Bestway’s facilities, they are sorted into sellable groups. Paper is often sent to California to be used in sea containers, while plastics are ground into feedstocks or reformed into irrigation pipes.
Cardboard is made into paper or drywall, and glass is made into new bottles. Tin and aluminum cans are made into other materials that are used nationally and internationally.
According to Archibald, recycling is one of the programs that she is most proud of. “We have a really strong residential recycling program,” said Archibald. “Fifty percent of our residents choose to recycle, even though it is all subscription-based and there is a charge to do so.”
Bestway has created the WAYGREEN program that residents can subscribe to for $5 a month. It is the most comprehensive recycling program in Colorado Springs. Bestway also outlines specific items than can and cannot be recycled so as to minimize landfill material being lumped in with single stream recycling.
Most recently, Bestway has been involved in helping CC students run the Recyclemania event, which measures the amount of diverted waste from the landfill. Although the results are not in yet, Archibald predicts that about 50 percent of the waste generated at CC is being diverted from the landfill.
As of last year, the school produced about 15,044 pounds of landfill-bound waste per week, about 7,163 pounds of single stream recycling, and 8,300 pounds of compost. That brought total waste generated per week to about 30,000 pounds, or five garbage trucks full of waste. Although these measurements are likely similar throughout the rest of the year, the audit was only conducted over the course of eight weeks.