The Circular Economy Development Center (CEDC) is a program of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment designed and operated by Circular Colorado.
Trash Panda Proves High-Performance Products Can Be Made with 100% Recycled Plastic
Making high-performance products from virgin plastic is difficult. Doing it from 100% recycled plastic is practically impossible. Materials vary, supply chains are inconsistent, and most manufacturers rely on virgin inputs to ensure consistency. Despite these roadblocks, Trash Panda has proven it can be done—producing more than 200,000 disc golf discs made entirely from recycled plastic, now sold in all 50 states and 26+ countries.
Trash Panda works with a wide range of material inputs, turning unconventional waste streams into usable feedstock. The company uses everything from Colorado-made cattle tags and discarded phone cases to post-industrial scrap and recovered discs through its take-back program. A recent partnership with Crocs adds another stream, incorporating material from post-consumer footwear. Facilitated through the CEDC’s material connectivity initiative, this collaboration brings together two Colorado-based companies—one seeking a circular solution for its post-consumer materials, the other seeking new recycled feedstock for end-market manufacturing.
With support from the CEDC, Trash Panda is now preparing to scale its operations, increasing both production capacity and the volume of material it can divert into new products.
Iron Woman Awarded Grant to Build Colorado’s First Full-scale, Public-Facing C&D Recycling Facility
Iron Woman Logistics Services (Iron Woman) was awarded a major grant from Colorado Circular Communities (C3) to develop a full-scale construction and demolition (C&D) recycling facility. The project represents a major step forward in closing a critical gap in Colorado’s waste infrastructure and accelerating the state’s transition to a circular economy.
Construction and demolition is the largest waste stream in Colorado, yet the Denver metro region has historically lacked facilities capable of sorting and recovering these materials at scale. The new Denver C&D recycling facility will provide essential infrastructure to support Denver’s landmark Universal Recycling and Composting Ordinance, regional diversion goals, and the development of robust circular material markets.
The new facility is designed to process mixed C&D waste at scale, recovering a wide range of materials for recycling and reuse. “This is the kind of project that makes circularity tangible,” said Laurie Johnson, Founder and CEO of Circular Colorado and Director of the Circular Economy Development Center. “It shows what it looks like to take a material stream we’ve historically overlooked and start building a system where those materials can be recovered and kept in use.”
The C3 grant will fund essential capital investments in site preparation, facility construction, and advanced sorting equipment—key barriers that have previously prevented such facilities from launching in the region.
Baling Twine Recycling – From Pasture to Products (or Pellets)
Did you know that most baling twine used for baling hay is made from plastic? In fact, it is largely made from polypropylene, which is easily recyclable. As a result of an introduction from the CEDC, the City of Steamboat Springs, a local hauler, and Twine Recycling are now partnering on a new baling twine drop-off program in the Yampa Valley in Routt County.
Here’s how the program works.
A local hauler hosts a collection bin for baling twine at each of their locations in Routt County – one in Steamboat Springs and one at their landfill in the unincorporated county.
The City of Steamboat Springs works with community partners to promote the program to farmers and ranchers throughout the Yampa Valley. The goal is to involve youth groups, providing hands-on education as they collect discarded twine in local areas. Collecting the twine helps protect wildlife by reducing habitat contamination.
Twine Recycling, a Colorado nonprofit organization, handles the logistics of collection and transportation of the baling twine to a processing facility in Arizona where it is made into plastic pellets for the making of plastics products such as automotive components, consumer durable goods, and more.
“We are excited for this material connection in the Yampa Valley. It brings more opportunities for waste diversion of hard to recycle materials and also assists the region with understanding the generation of material types and associated volumes,” said Alicia Archibald, Satellite Office Coordinator for the Circular Economy Development Center. “The CEDC is dedicated to establishing end markets in Colorado and will continue to work on a solution for twine in the state.”
Advancing Colorado’s Circular Economy Through Smarter Logistics
Building a circular economy depends on more than collecting materials—it requires efficient systems to move those materials to processors and manufacturers that can turn them into new products. As part of evaluating how to strengthen these connections across Colorado, we have been working with communities statewide to better understand how recycling systems operate in practice. This analysis—part of the work of the Circular Transportation Network (CTN)—has highlighted both what is already working and where logistical challenges remain.
Rural communities, from Eads to Cortez, are already recovering significant volumes of material through well-established recycling systems. These programs are often driven by the need to preserve landfill capacity or by strong local participation from residents and businesses. Many utilize multi-stream collection, requiring generators to sort materials themselves—an approach that consistently produces high-quality commodities that are attractive to end markets.
What this work has made clear, however, is that the primary constraint is not collection or material quality—it is logistics. Distance, smaller and dispersed material volumes, and the cost of transportation continue to limit the ability to get materials back into the circular economy.
These insights are shaping how we think about potential solutions. By engaging directly with local governments, businesses, and recyclers, we are identifying where improved coordination, aggregation, and transportation strategies could strengthen the connection between material supply and market demand.
Rural recycling in Colorado is already working. The opportunity ahead lies in addressing the logistical barriers that prevent these systems from reaching their full potential and ensuring that materials—no matter where they are generated—can move efficiently through the circular economy.