Steamboat Springs is hoping to implement several procedures to improve the city’s recycling practices, which several recycling advocates say are less than ideal. The city hired LBA Associates, Inc. — a Denver-based environmental consulting firm that works with local governments to help identify problems and make suggestions for their recycling programs — to study Steamboat’s problems and help the city improve.
The consultant identified several main issue to be solved: increased hauler reporting requirements to ensure that everything thrown in a recycling bin that can be recycled is actually being recycled, residential pay-as-you-throw programs, mandatory recycling for multi-family condo and apartment units, mandatory recycling for commercial businesses, a partnership between the city, Routt County and the Yampa Valley Sustainability Council for a county-wide recycling drop-off facility, changing the city’s code to require recycling in new buildings, and more public education and outreach.
When they discussed the issue at their Tuesday, Feb. 1, meeting, council members shared varying opinions on most of the suggestions, but all agreed that more public outreach about what can be recycled and where to recycle it is desperately needed. “This is a community that prides itself on sustainability and on care for the outdoors, and yet, we don’t recycle properly,” said council member Joella West. “I think if we don’t do anything else, and we spend some money on public outreach and education, we’re going to make some in-roads.”