Recycling

Fort Collins residents and small businesses can recycle a range of materials at the City's full-service recycling drop-off facility. The drop-off facility opened on March 22, 2002, and is located at 1702 Riverside, just north of the Rivendell School. See map. The one-acre drop-off site is open year-round to the public during daylight hours, seven days a week. The City contracts with a local security company to patrol the site seven days a week.

Materials collected at this drop-off site include:

• cardboard & brown paper bags (must be flattened)
• paperboard and low-grade paper (e.g., cereal boxes, cracker boxes, gift, shirt, shoe, tissue boxes, paper egg cartons, packing paper, wrapping paper, tissue paper, paper tubes, 6 or 12 pack beverage cartons)
• newspaper
• office paper
• junk mail
• telephone books
• soft-bound manuals and information books
• magazines
• catalogs
• commingled bottles and cans, including steel and aluminum cans, glass containers, and clean plastic containers numbered #1 through #7
• pizza boxes (put in paperboard recycling container). Boxes should be free of food.

The site features an educational kiosk with various panels of information such as: Recycling Right • Reduce, Reuse, Recycle • Buying Recycled, as well as a suggestion box and recycling brochures.

The kiosk (contructed by a City Natural Resources employee in the Natural Areas program area) is made out of recycled products except for the information panels. The roofing is made from recycled old garden hoses. The structure was built from decking (brown) that is made from recycled wood and plastic milk jugs, as well as recycled plastic lumber (gray).

The site includes two 40-yard hydraulic compactor units for collecting cardboard and brown paper bags. The compaction system is self-activated by depositing flattened materials into a six-inch opening on each unit. Children are not allowed on this equipment's platform. Once the containers are full, they are transported to the Larimer County Recycling Center for further processing.

View close-up of sign
Download pdf file of sign (Adobe Acrobat Reader needed)

View close-up of sign
Download pdf file of sign (Adobe Acrobat Reader needed)

A third compactor collects single layer cardboard commonly called "paperboard" such as cereal, shoe, shirt and tissue boxes, phone books, low-grade paper types and pizza boxes, including:

• paper egg cartons
• PIZZA BOXES
• soft-bound books
• six or twelve-pack beverage cartons
• brown paper/envelopes
• wrapping/tissue paper
• packing paper
• paper tubes (any size & thickness)

Glass, plastic, and metal bottles and cans are collected together in two "commingled" 30-yard containers.

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Download pdf file of sign (Adobe Acrobat Reader needed)

Interested in learning what those numbers on the bottom of your plastic soda bottles mean? Click here for information on the plastic codes (pdf).

One 30-yard container collects mixed paper grade materials called "Newspaper Plus" aka "#7 ONP" (newspaper, office paper, file folders, magazines, catalogs and junk mail). These recyclable materials are also taken to the Larimer County Recycling Center where the materials will be processed, baled and shipped to markets.

View close-up of sign
Download pdf file of sign (Adobe Acrobat Reader needed)

Additional photos:

• Recycling container being attached to roll-off truck
• Recycling container being hoisted up onto roll-off truck
• Recycling container loaded on the roll-off truck

Background: In 1999, the City Natural Resources Department began exploring ways to create a centralized, full-service, publicly accessible drop-off center to help meet citizens' growing demands to improve the convenience of existing drop-off sites, and to increase the types of material accepted for recycling. The only full-service facility was Larimer County's Recycling Center, which is located at the County landfill several miles south of Fort Collins. The drop-off center property is being leased from the Rivendell School. The City, through the Natural Resources Department, purchased the five roll-off recycling containers and is using the services of a local contractor to haul the containers to recycling plants where the recyclables will be processed and baled for market.

Since the volume of paperboard materials being recycled by residents continued to increase, the City purchased and installed an additional compactor unit strictly for paperboard collection in mid-December 2003.

For more information, contact the City Natural Resources Department at 221-6600.