BOULDER, Colo. — A steady stream of cars regularly lines up at a different kind of drive-through in this city.
Drivers aren’t picking up fast food or a cup of coffee; they’re dropping off shoes, computer monitors, plastic grocery bags and cooking oil that once lined landfills, but now find new life.
A consistent flow of 120 to 150 cars drive through each day, according to Scott Lilleston, window attendant. The most commonly dropped off items are electronics, he said, followed by Styrofoam and plastic bags.
‘‘We get tons of it,” he said.
Late Monday morning, Elisa Miller, 33, pulled up to the drive-through window at CHaRM (the Center for Hard-to-Recycle Materials), paid $10, and proceeded around a small loop to an area where electronics are deposited.
The previous night, Miller’s dog rendered a computer monitor useless by chewing through one of its cords, so she drove to CHaRM to dispose of it.
The six-year Boulder resident said she didn’t mind paying the $10 recycling fee for two reasons — she felt good about recycling something that could be harmful if placed in a landfill, and she would have to pay to trash it anyway.
Miller has only a small trash can, and since Boulder residents have a pay-as-you-throw trash system, she would be charged extra for a larger bin to accommodate the monitor.
‘‘I pay either way,” she said.
Miller’s monitor will end up in Denver, at a ‘‘demanufacturing” center that will recycle about 98 percent of its glass, plastic and metal parts, according to Eric Lombardi, executive director of Eco-Cycle, which operates CHaRM.
CHaRM is one small, but important part of Eco-Cycle’s ‘‘zero waste” system.
There, residents like Miller may dispose of televisions, bike tires, Styrofoam, cell phones and even sneakers. Many items are free — hard-bound and paperback books, cooking oil, clothing, plastic toys, and printer cartridges. Others require a fee — $30 for a television larger than 34 inches, $2 for iPods, $8 for fax machines.
Most of the fees are associated with the electronic items, because they must be disassembled before they can be recycled. The money is used to offset the cost of collection, storage and reselling of the materials.
Lombardi said he hopes to one day pass on these costs to the manufacturer instead of Boulder residents.
The hard-to-recycle items are reused in a variety of ways: children’s books are distributed to nonprofits in the county; athletic shoes are turned into materials to resurface athletic fields, tracks and playgrounds; and porcelain from toilets, sinks and urinals is used in road construction.
CHaRM is always expanding the items it accepts. This year added bike tires (50 cents) and tubes (free).
On the web
For information about CHaRM, go online to www.ecocycle.org⁄charm.
