Summit County home owners can save money and help the environment too.
I deal with many second home buyers in Frisco, Silverthorne, Dillon and Breckenridge.
One of their commonly asked questions is what to do with their trash. Many end up disposing of it in someone else’s dumpster, and more than a few businesses have had to resort to putting locks on their dumpsters. When the businesses have no room for their own trash, they have to schedule more frequent pickups at considerably higher expense. Of course, if you own a condo in Summit County, your trash pickup is included in your dues and dumpsters are provided. Duplexes, some townhomes and single family homes often have the problem of how to dispose of their garbage. Some people take it home with them if they live in the Denver metro area, and put it out with the trash at their primary residence. That is difficult to do if your main home is in Texas or Nebraska. Of course, you can always order trash service, but at over $100 every three months, it doesn’t made sense financially if the home owners are only here for a week or two at a time, perhaps once a month or less.
A simple solution is to recycle. My husband and I , who live here full time, have cancelled our trash service. We had weekly trash pickups and the recycling was collected every other week. We often missed it, forgetting to put the cans and bins out in the morning. In bear country you cannot put trash out the night before. We would end up going to the recycling center when the bins overflowed. In doing so, we discovered that they took many more items than the trash company would take to recycle, so much of what could have been recycled was ending up in the trash. Now, by recycling everything possible, our trash is less than one bag a week. If I composted, it would be even less than that, but with bears in my neighborhood, I have been afraid to compost. I have been told that if I do it properly, or if I use worms to compost in my garage, it won’t attract bears. I might try it one day. The High Country Conservation Center offers classes in composting, and I may sign up for one this summer.
So how do we get rid of our trash? Waste Management in Silverthorne will take our one bag and they charge us $2 to do it. We drop it off on our way to the post office. Now my trash service is costing me $6 to $8 a month and I am recycling much more than I ever did. It is a win-win all around. I save money and more gets recycled. Now I need to see if I can get rid of my addiction to paper towels and kleenex, and perhaps I can get down to one bag every two weeks!
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