On a crisp summer morning, volunteers transformed the parking lot of the Estes Park Events Complex into a winding maze of recycling hubs. Residents entered a makeshift drive-through and turned left for on-site paper shredding. A right turn brought them to a line of boxes for recycling electronics, such as TVs, laptops, printers, and smoke detectors. On the other side of the lot, a scrap metal station was set up in a giant trailer, which was soon filled with pieces of furniture, chicken wire, and microwave ovens.
If the event had a theme song, it might be something like the Oompa Loompa work tune from “Willy Wonka”:
Oompa Loompa, doo-ba-dee-doo
We have a little message for you
Oompa Loompa, doo-ba-dee-dee
If you are wise, you’ll listen to me
What do you get when you throw things away?
Mountains of trash piling higher each day!
Why make a mess when there’s something to do?
Reduce, reuse, recycle — it’s true!
You’ll have no waste to hide,
If you keep Estes on your mind!
While not quite Oompa Loompas, some seven dozen volunteers outfitted in neon yellow traffic vests were scattered across the parking lot to assist nearly 500 households that brought unwanted, unused, and broken-down things to recycle. The volunteers directed traffic, broke down boxes, unloaded vehicles, and sorted electronic and metal scraps.
The League of Women Voters of Estes Park and the Estes Noon Rotary Club hosted the annual Estes Recycles Day this month to help residents and local businesses recycle typically hard-to-recycle items like large electronics, furniture, metal, paper, and cardboard for free or for a small fee. According to organizers, the recycling event not only helps Estes become a more sustainable place to live and visit but also engages the community through activism and fundraising.
Recycles Day requires months of planning and preparation, according to one of the co-chairs of the League of Women Voters’ Community Recycling Committee, Cathy Alper. She works with fellow co-chairs Alice Reumen and Mary Sampson and a team of volunteers to put on the event. In 2023, the League applied for and received grants from the Estes Valley Sunrise Rotary Club, Village Thrift Shop, Premier Members Credit Union of Estes Park, and the Town of Estes Park to reduce the cost of recycling to make it more accessible and convenient for residents.
“The primary goal is to keep all this stuff out of the landfill. The secondary goal is to raise enough money that we can keep the prices really low, so that even low-income people can bring their televisions, their old phones, their scrap metal to recycle,” said Alper.
Eco-Cycle, a nonprofit recycling company based in Boulder, handled electronics and scrap metal for the event. Eco-Cycle’s goal is to implement recycling at the local, state, and national levels by working with governments, businesses, and nonprofits to make recycling accessible and affordable.
“Recycles Day is great,” said Alexis Hobbs, an employee of Eco-Cycle. “The events are really fun to get us out of the office, and this one is going incredibly smoothly. All of the volunteers are great, and I feel like maybe a lot of them were here before, because they’re doing a great job.”
When collecting electronics, Eco-Cycle sorts and disassembles components. Plastic parts can be turned into pellets, and metals, including electrical wiring, can be shredded.
The Noon Rotary Club hired Shred-It, an on-site mobile service that shreds documents directly into a trailer. The paper is then properly recycled rather than winding up in the landfill. The service club charges $15 per 30-pound box of paper as a scholarship fundraiser for high school students.
Rotarian Tara Moenning, who has been involved with Recycles Day since 2007 and the scholarship project since 2011, said the club typically raises only about $3,000 through donations at the paper shredding station on Recycles Day, a small portion of the scholarship money. Moenning said Recycles Day is half fundraising and half community service.
“We’re really thankful for people volunteering their money, because they don’t have to pay anything,” said Doug Manning, an eight-year Rotary Club member volunteering at the paper shredding station for the first time. “They’re helping out with scholarships by being involved in this.”
Over the past several years, the recycling event has evolved from a small operation in the Presbyterian church parking lot to a larger event with significant community and government support. Experience has helped organizers improve the logistics each year to reduce long lines and wait times, and the town provides the event center parking lot as a venue and some supplies to support the effort.
More than just waste management: service, camaraderie, and eco-education
The League of Women Voters’ website highlights Waste Management and Superior Trash Company as private waste collection services that also offer recycling. Joan Hooper, a volunteer who has lived in Estes Park for two years, said that because private, for-profit groups handle recycling in Estes, it creates a space and a need for volunteers to get both the government and the community involved in coordinating with one another to recycle more and keep unnecessary waste out of the landfill.
“I’ve started really listening to the community’s issues, and there’s tension between preserving what we have, providing services which the community needs, and giving visitors an opportunity to experience [nature in Estes] too,” Hooper said.
A community of volunteers from service and civic organizations steps up to take part in Recycles Day. Some have been volunteering for years. Hooper credits the closeness of some of the volunteers to Estes being a small town where everybody knows everybody.
“I have fun helping people out,” Doug Moenning said. “You are always able to engage with the community this way, and it’s a great advertisement for Rotary and what we do. It’s one of the reasons why I like that on the back of our jerseys we have ‘Rotary.’ We want to show how we’re involved in the community.”
Volunteer recruits of all ages are welcome and encouraged to join. Amy Wolf, who runs the sustainability department at the YMCA of the Rockies – Estes Park Center, gathered a group of volunteers to join Recycles Day for the first time. Keaton Fairchild, an Estes resident, was among them.
“I hadn’t heard of this event before,” Fairchild said. “I signed up to volunteer and didn’t realize how big a deal it was. It’s a good community builder as well. There’s lots of people working together and different organizations coming together too. It’s great because it’s hard sometimes to get rid of your electronics, especially. Even I’m learning a lot.”
The event serves as an awareness and educational opportunity for volunteers who learn what can be recycled and how to recycle it properly, and then are able to bring that knowledge home. Alper said the Community Recycling Committee also send out promotional materials educating residents on what can be recycled prior to the event. “People are coming through, and volunteers are now seeing that they can recycle that stuff, and telling their friends,” Hobbs said. “It really helps get the word out on some of the more unique things that can be recycled.”
Estes community members are not only working together to increase recycling and reuse in the town, but they’re also supporting other good causes through recycling, building lifelong communal friendships, and educating the public through community activism.
“It’s such a great community thing, because all of our volunteers either belong to the Rotary or the League of Women Voters or are just active people,” Alper said. “You don’t have to belong to the League of Women Voters to be part of our Community Recycling Committee. They’re all really active people, just helping the community out. That’s the best thing, the community that it brings.”
Oompa Loompa, doo-ba-dee-dar
Be a green hero, you’ll go far!
Recycle in Estes, keep nature new,
Protecting the mountains and skies ever so blue!
You will live in happiness too
Like the Oompa Loompa doo-ba-dee-doo!
Part II of the Estes Valley Voice’s series on “Reduce, reuse, recycle” will explore waste management in Estes Park.
You must be logged in to post a comment.