Alpine Waste Expanding Altogether MRF

Commerce City, Colo.-based Alpine Waste & Recycling has broken ground on a $1.1 million expansion of its Altogether Recycling facility in north Denver recycling plant. The project is due to be completed by the end of April 2011.

The expansion will increase the Altogether MRFs size and capacity by about two-thirds, according to a press release issued by Alpine Waste & Recycling. “The expansion reinforces Alpine’s six-year-old strategic direction as a business committed to sustainability and environmentalism, dedicated to helping other businesses on the same path,” the company states in the release.

“As the community becomes increasingly educated to the benefits of recycling, we have seen a significant increase in the flow of materials into our Altogether Recycling plant,” says John Griffith, president of Alpine Waste. “We anticipate a continuation of that growth into the future, and we want to be prepared to handle all of Metro Denver’s recycling demands.”

When complete, the plant will cover 52,000 square feet. Running two filtering and sorting lines simultaneously, the MRF will be able to process 15,000 tons of recyclables per month, up from 10,000, the company says. Alpine says it also plans to examine ways to incorporate its nearby transfer station into the process, perhaps by re-directing pockets of trash that are high in recyclables.

“We are pleased to see Alpine’s continued commitment to recycling and we encourage the community to take advantage of this increased capacity,” says Marjie Griek, executive director of the Colorado Association for Recycling (www.cafr.org).

When the Altogether Plant opened in September 2007, Alpine was contributing 200 tons of recyclables, collected largely from the company’s commercial clientele. Today that figure is closer to 1,500 tons.

Founded in 1999 as a single-truck operation, Alpine Waste & Recycling says it now has more than 50 trucks and more than 170 employees, Alpine hauls more than 130,000 tons of waste and recyclables per year.