Breckenridge Recycling Center

This recycling center is one of many mountain locations offered by the High Country Conservation Center organization. It’s free to the public and open all day, every day! We were so excited to learn about this place because Summit County does not offer curbside pick-​up of recyclables unless you go through a private (and expensive) company. Since we have been building a house for the past year, you can imagine the wood, metal and cardboard waste and scraps — and okay, maybe juuust a few beer cans and Gatorade bottles — we’ve accumulated. This has become a weekly stop on our way home as we bring a trailer full of recyclables here rather than let them go to a landfill. There are huge roll-​offs clearly labeled for different materials and with big steps so you can more easily get higher to toss in your stuff (if you’re carrying large things, this is a huge help). They even take things like barbecues, space heaters and the like. I will admit that we’ve even found something to take home with us from one of the bins — a metal shelving unit that now sits in our garage. If that isn’t recycling, I don’t know what is. FYI, one thing they don’t take is trash. But you can figure that out by reading the signs posted everywhere. The area is kept pretty clean and the bins are emptied frequently meaning we’ve never had an issue with lack of space for leaving our huge quantities of items. It’s also located right across the street from the Habitat for Humanity Restore if you want to keep your green theme going. If you are up in the mountains for outdoor pursuits, there is no excuse not to take your beer cans here on the way home, or to their other locations in Dillon and Frisco! It will only take a couple of minutes. You don’t have to interact with any staff, just pull in, drop off and be on your nature-​loving, tree-​hugging way.
From their website: «All recyclables recycled at the drop-​off centers end up at the Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) located at the Summit County Resource Allocation Park (SCRAP) in Keystone, where they are sorted, bailed, and shipped all over the United States to be made into new products.» How cool is that?