Fort Collins will require construction and demolition crews to send most debris to a planned regional sorting and recycling facility for 10 years after that facility opens its doors. Fort Collins City Council unanimously approved the mandate  just after signing on to a regional agreement supporting plans to replace the nearly full Larimer County Landfill; build a central transfer station for trash; and create new facilities for recycling or composting food scraps, yard waste, construction and demolition debris.

Larimer County and Loveland have already signed on to the intergovernmental agreement. Estes Park is likely to do so next week, and Wellington might join, too. The construction and demolition facility could be in operation as soon as 2022 just south of the current landfill site on Taft Hill Road between Fort Collins and Loveland. It will sit on Colorado’s first-of-its-kind “resource recovery park,” which is basically a one-stop shop for construction waste, yard waste, food scraps and recycling, with an on-site transfer station where haulers and residents can drop off trash for trucking to a new county-owned landfill north of Wellington.

Fort Collins’ new requirement would apply only to mixed construction and demolition debris, meaning people could separate their waste by material type to avoid sending it to the county facility. The so-called “flow control” policy is meant to ensure the new facility has enough material to work with when it opens up, according to the leaders of the regional planning group that crafted the county’s plans for trash once the landfill closes in 2024. Loveland leaders made a similar commitment for yard waste last month, which ensures that the planned yard waste composting facility will begin operation as soon as 2022.

To read the full story, visit https://www.coloradoan.com/story/news/2019/04/17/fort-collins-approves-recycling-requirement-construction-waste/3494091002/.

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