If you're a seasonal decorator, you've likely come across some broken (or maybe just impossibly tangled) light strands in the last few weeks. The city of Denver would prefer you don't throw them in the trash.
Instead, they've opened up two sites where you can recycle them for free:
- The Cherry Creek Recycling Center, near the intersection of S. Quebec St. and E. Cherry Creek South Drive. They're open Tuesday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. This spot is closed on Sundays.
- Blue Star Recyclers, at 953 Decatur St., is open Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. This spot is closed on Sundays, and it'll also be closed Dec. 24 to Jan. 1 for the holidays.
The light recycling program is open through Jan. 2, 2025.
Relatedly, Denver's annual "treecycle" program, for Christmas trees, opens on Dec. 26.
Those busted lights will be be transformed.
Your broken strands are heading to Wisconsin-based Dynamic Lifecycle Innovations, which will turn them into something sellable.
Amanda Buros, a vice president with the company, said there's a market for pretty much anything in the e-waste recycling system.
"The copper is extracted from the Christmas lights, and then that copper is used to go back into kind of a refining or smelting process that then makes it accessible and eligible to go back into remanufacturing of new products," she told us.
The lights go through a mechanical "chopping process" that she said grinds the valuable metal wiring from its plastic casing. The plastic is "consumed within the process."
"Our goal ... is really to either reuse or recycle, extract as much of the entire whole product as we can," Buros told us. "We don't landfill anything."
Denver's recycling push fits into a global effort to keep electronics out of landfills.
The United Nations' Global E-waste Monitor estimates the world generates tens of millions of tons of this stuff every year.
Electronics waste can leak heavy metals and other toxics into the ground when it's thrown away. The U.N also says it's billions of dollars of useful material "squandered" and "dumped. Though the recycling industry has grown in the last decade, recycling rates have actually dropped because humanity generates new e-waste at about five times its pace.
Those holiday lights add up, too. Denver diverted 4,352 pounds of the stuff from landfills last year, something the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure was proud of.
On its website, where can find more information , someone wrote: "Great work everyone!"
