Resource Recovery Park: A Waste-Reducing Project in the Works

Americans are currently producing an average of 4.4 pounds of waste per person per day. In La Plata County alone, this means we are producing a ton of waste every 12 minutes, enough to fill more than 2,000 semi-trucks every year. When the waste from Archuleta and Montezuma Counties are included, we produce a ton of waste every 7.5 minutes, enough to fill 3,500 semi-trucks annually. Unfortunately, rural residents generally produce more waste than urban residents, so our waste problem is actually larger than the 4.4 pounds per person per day would suggest. Finally, the recycling rate in this region is half of the state average and five times lower than the national average.

Landfilling Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) constitutes both an environmental and economic liability. The environmental consequences of landfilling our waste include air and water pollution. The pollution occurs locally as greenhouse gases escape into our atmosphere and leachate seeps out of the landfill, as well as globally when new materials must be extracted and refined to replace the resources we waste.
Furthermore, landfilling waste robs potential small businesses of valuable raw materials and maintains only three full-time jobs at the Bondad landfill; one gate attendant and two equipment operators. Even though our community currently only recycles about 4.3% of our waste, we already maintain 18 full-time jobs in recycling and many more in reuse. Continuing to send the majority of our waste to the landfill will not contribute to the economic development of our region.

A Resource Recovery Park (RRP) is currently being proposed in our region that could be a potential solution to waste and economic development issues. An RRP would provide a better outlet for all recyclable and reusable material resources, by expanding recycling services to meet current and future demand, and by increasing opportunities for employment and self-employment.

A Resource Recovery Park is a co-location of reuse, recycling, composting, manufacturing, and retail businesses in one central facility, where the public can bring all their waste and recoverable materials to one convenient location.  The proposed RRP would include a regional recycling facility, a buy-back facility, a compost center, a compost-powered green house, a center for hard to recycle materials (CHARM), and a green business incubator program, among others.

Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) is filled with valuable materials that can become an economic asset rather than an environmental liability. When collected with skill and care, and upgraded with quality in mind, these discarded materials can become the foundation for a variety of local reuse and recycling businesses and products. In this way, recycling is an economic development tool as well as an environmental tool. Reuse and recycling offer direct opportunities for our community to build the local economic base by generating local revenue, expanding small business opportunities and creating jobs. Creating a Resource Recovery Park will create design, engineering and construction jobs from the start, green-collar jobs and careers once the RRP is operational, and finally white-collar jobs and careers once we become a best practice community.

A Closer Look at the Energy Efficient Hotel Industry

When you stay at a hotel for more than one night, do you toss your towel on the floor, or do you hang it up for a second use? Most people do not do the simple act of re-using towels, which accounts for an extra 17 gallons of water to wash towels per room. Millions of gallons of water can potentially be saved by reusing towels at hotels. There are multiple hotels in the region that have “gone green” including the historic Strater Hotel, which has received the acclaimed EPA Energy Rating for their efforts. Other awards have been donated to hotels and motels in the region, from the Green Eco-Leaf Rating to being members of the Green Hotels Association.

There are a lot of times that people overlook hotels going green. This is a huge effort on the hotel industry’s part for bettering the economy and reducing their carbon footprint. According to recent statistics from the US Lodging Utility Expenses, electricity costs take up nearly 61% of total expenses.  It is also found that by investing in efficient choices for hotel, these investments nearly all paid off in 3 or less years and reduced greenhouse gas emissions by up to 75%.

A great example of these investments is the Marriott International’s. This hotel won the respectable reward of ENERGY STAR Sustained Excellence designation in 2007. It was found that in 2006 alone this Marriott saved over $6 Million as well as reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 70,000 tons. In order to achieve this sustainability the Marriott installed 450,000 CFL’s, converted outdoor sings to LED’s and fiberglass lighting as well as implemented water and energy efficient laundry systems. All of these changes were of no inconvenience and found to be virtually unperceivable to guests, yet amounted in a 2% reduction in greenhouse gas production per room!

On average, hotels have a 57.6% occupancy rate, accounting for nearly half empty rooms at a given time, which accumulates in unnecessary energy used to maintain those rooms’ conditions. Las Vegas is considered the second largest tourist destination in the nation, behind Times Square, NY; yet Las Vegas has a shocking recycle rate of 99%. Not only is this number surprising, but also extremely necessary for Las Vegas’s location in the expansive Nevada drought. In a lot of ways, Las Vegas Strip is leading the way for hotel industries around the world in terms of resourcefulness and efficiency.

Another example of how hotels are becoming more efficient is the Radisson LAX. This hotel has installed a system called Evolve Energy Management Systems (Evolve EMS). This system has been installed in over 580 guestrooms. The Evolve EMS system controls all lighting, televisions, temperature and energy controls of the room by inserting the room key into a slot when you enter the room which turns all lighting and energy controls on for the room-holder to adjust accordingly. When the card is taken out of the slot when the guest leaves the room, all lighting and energy is shut off, and temperature is set 5 degrees lower, saving over 30% energy usage per room, again at no inconvenience to guests.

There are countless ways for hotels to become more energy efficient without impacting guest comfort. A lot of hotels are beginning to look long term into efficient solutions that can save the hotels millions of dollars and reduce carbon footprints drastically. Especially when it can be calculated that there are 4,204,151 people sleeping in a hotel in the US every night (Tamika Figgs from the AH&LA Information Center).

About the Author

Lily Oswald is a junior at Animas High School participating in the Leading Internships for New Knowledge (LINK) program. Through community involvement, students learn to thrive in a professional setting and connect their coursework to their experiences in the working world.Learn more about Lily and her work at Animas High School by checking out her on-line digital portfolio

Greening the MLS

There is a shift across the US as Realtor organizations add "green" to the Multiple Listing Source (MLS). It’s happening quickly, but the story goes back a lot longer.

A few years back buyers from many walks of life started looking for new features in a home. ENERGY STAR did a lengthy survey of consumers nationwide and found that 92% of them look for “green” in a home. It doesn’t mean that’s all they want. But they added that to the wish list they bring a builder or a Realtor, along with the views, the deck, and the garage for all their sports gear.

Some people want a home to be efficient and have low heating bills.  Some people want their home to have less cost of replacing parts over the years- like the windows and siding. Some want their air inside to be clean just like our air outside is. So that’s how the building industry came up with dozens of ways of categorizing and rating both energy efficiency, and even further, a green-built home or neighborhood. People started asking for “green” to be added to the mix. 

The market responded! In La Plata County there are over 250 homes that have been built to third-party certified green-built standards, like ENERGY STAR, Built Green Colorado, or LEED. On top of that, dozens if not hundreds more have at least an aspect, or feature, of their home dealing with sustainability including everything from solar electric to energy efficient windows. This created a problem. The MLS is a way we Realtors, appraisers, and others in the real estate industry communicate. It is how we search for homes for sale, how we decide how much they are worth, and how buyers are able to get mortgages. There is a category for everything from address to searchable fields for location to whether it is waterfront, but unless you know all the places to find a green built home and what it includes, you couldn’t search for one. How do you search for a healthy home?

Appraisers had a home that was LEED certified and they didn’t know where to look to find another to compare it to.  So if they appraised a green-built home they would compare it to another home built to La Plata County code. This wasn’t a local problem only. Nationally at the end of 2010 less than 5% of MLS’s had a way to categorize green-built homes. This had to change, and it did very rapidly.

Locally, we worked on the Climate and Energy Action Plan in our county with a dedicated group of volunteers from across all parts of our community which 4CORE helped facilitate. With the signing of the U.S. Mayor's Climate Protection Agreement, La Plata County, the City of Durango, and the Town of Ignacio resolved to develop a local climate and energy action plan with specific policies and programs to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.We created a plan for over 100 measures of bringing sustainable practices to our county. In the Residential, Industrial, and Commercial group, which I worked with, these measures range from new construction codes, standardizing energy mortgages, and educating Realtors, homeowners and builders. Greening the MLS stood out as something that needed changing. 

In La Plata County, our MLS is shared with six Realtor Boards from Montrose all the way to the San Luis Valley, and it’s owned by a corporation in which Realtors from each member Board govern. Attempts had been made to add green features to the MLS, but these boards didn’t all see the reasoning to spend the money to reprogram the system since some areas have lots of green building, and others in very rural areas have little if any and they all had to share the cost.

In 2010 a grant through the Governor's Energy Office (GEO) became available because Colorado also found that greening the MLS’s was a key missing in the future of more sustainable building. They gave grants of a few thousand dollars to MLS’s to reprogram their system and add these new items. People talk about how much money it takes to make serious changes in the world of business, but this few thousand dollars gave our part of the state enough of a reason to make serious and comprehensive changes in our MLS.

Realtors and appraisers in all of these areas I mentioned now can search only for homes with a HERS rating, even in a particular range (for example between 41-80) or they can look for a home with a certain feature like being made from materials with low-volatile organic compounds (VOCs).  Appraisers can now find comparable sales. 

The next steps include educating the industry and showing that green built homes have value. Seattle was one of the first cities that added green-built home categories to the MLS. In the first year of tracking it they found third-party certified green-built homes sold for a 10.5% premium, and stayed on the market 24% less time. Being able to prove a cost value to the benefits of living in a green-built home convinces a lender to write a mortgage for it, and shows a builder a reason to spend the extra time, money and especially the expertise they require to build homes this way. The GEO, our MLS, and 4CORE is now building a database to see if green built homes here sell in less days on the market, or a higher price, or both!

Imagine how these numbers are convincing builders to build green, and convincing buyers that a green investment makes investment good sense all around. Someday, maybe very soon, we'll be able to show green built homes have more durability, health benefits, are better for the environment and community, save money on utility bills, and command a higher price on the market. 

Because that’s how it should be, right?

About the Author
Heather Erb has been a Realtor for 10 years with Coldwell Banker, she’s the Past President of the Durango Area Association of Realtors (DAAR), and the 2011 DAAR Realtor of the Year. She is the Past President of the Colorado Real Estate Network (CREN)–an MLS corporation providing 1,500 people through the western slope with MLS service, and currently the Vice President of La Plata Electric Association. She speaks regionally about green building and the market, and was the Vice Chair of the steering committee of La Plata County’s Climate and Energy Action Plan, CEAP. Heather was instrumental in a Green Feature Initiative- creating green fields for the MLS in southwest Colorado. She can be found on her blog.