Nestle Waters Chaffee County Project: Commissioners will discuss 1041 permit today

From the Colorado Springs Gazette (R. Scott Rappold):

County commissioners will discuss, and possibly vote on, the permit today.

A Nestle official says foes’ complaints are with bottled water as a whole. “Most of it has nothing to do with the 1041 or the science. It’s their opinions about the end use of the water,” said Bruce Lauerman, Nestle’s natural-resources manager, a hydrogeologist who travels the West, looking for natural springs the company can tap so it can call its product spring water.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, plastic accounts for 16.9 percent of trash in America, up from 2.6 percent in 1970. Yet just 6.8 percent of the plastic made each year is recycled, the lowest of any commodity. About 80 percent of plastic water bottles end up in the trash…

The concern is that new bottles aren’t made from recycled materials, and even those dropped in recycling bins don’t get made into bottles because it is difficult to remake the plastic and not enough are recycled to meet manufacturers’ needs. Most water bottles dropped into recycling bins in Colorado Springs are bundled and sent to China, where they are made into jackets, park benches, plastic lumber and other products. Waste Management sends 375 tons a month of plastic beverage bottles dropped in Colorado recycling bins to China, said company spokeswoman Melissa Kolwaite. And that is actually much better than Colorado used to do in recycling. In a state where 12.5 percent of waste is recycled – less than half the national average of 28.5 percent – things are improving. Last year, single-stream recycling, in which all materials can be dropped in the same bin, came to Colorado Springs. According to a legislative report on recycling, 89.7 percent of the state’s residents have access to curbside recycling, while 7.76 percent have drop-off recycling.

More Coyote Gulch coverage here and here.