From The Durango Telegraph – November 6, 2025
… Durango Outdoor Exchange owner Jen LaCroix wanted to find a way to recycle the massive amounts of down that come through the store. Although the store regularly donates down sleeping bags, jackets and other items to the local unhoused population, they still find themselves up to their beaks in feathers.
Then, at a Green Business roundtable, LaCroix learned about the Colorado Circular Economy Development Center, or CEDC. A program of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, its aim is to facilitate Colorado’s circular economy – that is, taking products at the end of their lifecycle, like down or plastic film, and recovering and reusing them to make new materials or products.
“The idea is that semitrucks are coming from the Front Range to these rural areas to deliver goods. And then they’re driving home empty,” explained LaCroix. “So what the CEDC has done is create an opportunity for those semitrucks to be filled with recyclable materials that are then taken to factories on the Front Range to be recycled.”
To that end, DOE will be holding a down drive of sorts that weekend, asking folks to bring in their old down items, from comforters to coats. What can’t be sold at the store will be loaded on the truck and brought to the Front Range. From there, it will go to Tersus Solutions, a Denver-based leader in cleaning and recycling down from the outdoor industry, including such heavy hitters as Patagonia, North Face and Arc’Teryx.