City of Grand Junction, Bruin Waste Management target mid-2026 for recycling-sorting center to be ready

Tim Harty, The Business Times

Their motivation is different, but their conclusion is the same. The City of Grand Junction and Bruin Waste Management agree Grand Junction needs a center to sort materials for recycling.

And the discovery of their like-mindedness on the ultimate goal has them partnering as they travel down the road to likely having a regional material recovery facility (MRF) in Grand Junction by mid-2026.

That partnership will look like this: The City of Grand Junction is going to own the building, the land it’s on and the equipment needed to sort the recycled materials. Bruin Waste Management, with its expertise in waste collection and recycling, is going to operate the business.

Where they’re now at in the process is the city is buying an approximately 58,000-square-foot building and 10.5 acres of land at 365 32 Road in the former Halliburton complex from Bruin Waste Management for $5.6 million. Bruin had the property under contract because it thought it was going into this recycling-sorting venture solo.

Grand Junction General Services Director Jay Valentine said it’s close to closing on the property, but it has taken longer than normal because “that whole complex (nearly 44 acres) is all one parcel, and so it’s going through the subdivision process. And from my understanding there’s just a few minor things left to do on that, and so when that actually becomes a parcel officially, then we’ll close on the property. I anticipate that really any time.”

In the meantime, the city put out requests for proposals for vendors to provide AI-powered robots and optical equipment that will do the sorting.

“We had a site visit for any vendors that are interested, and we had very good turnout,” Valentine said. “Vendors from all over the country and Canada came, so we anticipate some quite competitive offers for the equipment.”

The equipment, he said, is the most expensive part of the $18 million to $19 million the overall project likely will cost.

The third major expense is the build-out that must be done in the building to prepare it for the equipment it will house.

“The building itself will take some modification,” Valentine said. “There’s some internal walls that will be (demolished) to make the building so we can utilize the length of the building. Right now, there’s firewalls between the base that are within that building, so it will also have a fire-suppression system and those kind of things.”

Bruin Waste Management doesn’t have as much to do at the moment, but it is: providing its expertise for buying equipment; consulting on the building design to make it as efficient as possible; and seeing what money it can drum up to help the city with its capital investment.

“We’re working together actively on gathering as much grant funding as we possibly can to ease the capital part,” Bruin Waste Management President and CEO Jeff Kendall said. “We think there is significant opportunity there to have grant funding for the project, so we’re collaborating to get that funding.”

When everything is in place and operational, Valentine thinks the cost will fall into the projected $18-19 million range.

“We had a feasibility study done, and that was kind of the estimate that we had through them, and we’re still kind of on that same track,” he said.

Another domino that needs to fall is agreement on an operating agreement between the city and Bruin Waste Management.

“I’ll just cut to the chase on that. We don’t have the structure of that operating agreement in writing yet,” Valentine said. “But the idea will be Bruin Waste actually has a lot of experience in operating these types of facilities. … So, we’re going to wait to see what kind of equipment that we’re going to have and what kind of staffing needs we’re going to have, and then we’ll develop an operating agreement.”

Valentine doesn’t seem at all worried about getting that done.

“Long story short, we have a developer agreement, and eventually we’ll have the operating agreement,” he said. “We just don’t know what that operating agreement looks like at this time. But they will be a partner with us in operating this facility.”

HOW BRUIN WASTE MANAGEMENT GOT HERE

Bruin Waste Management operates throughout the Western Slope, providing waste hauling and recycling for numerous cities and towns.

The recycling is single stream, meaning it’s collected without any sorting, and when the closest sorting operations are in Salt Lake City and Denver, driving truckloads of recycling materials those long distances is cost-prohibitive. So, Bruin decided to take matters into its own hands for a better solution.

“It has to start with infrastructure, and that didn’t exist on the Western Slope, still doesn’t really exist on the Western Slope to do it effectively and efficiently,” Kendall said. “We saw and felt that problem firsthand for a long time as the primary waste haulers and recycling waste haulers, because we were forced to have small manual processes and ship our materials to Utah to be sorted and then sold, which is – a third-grader could see that that’s not a very efficient supply chain, right?”

Bruin didn’t see the sense or cents in burning a lot of extra fuel and the wear and tear of the extra miles on its trucks. That makes it “a lot more costly to process that recycling, which at the end of the day, you have to be able to do things sustainably to offer it at an affordable price to the customers,” Kendall said. “If you can’t do that, you can not buy in.”

Bruin Waste Management instead looked for a location to buy in Grand Junction and build its own recycling-sorting center.

And Kendall said it was prepared to make the capital investment, and then the City of Grand Junction’s request for proposals for a partner to operate an MRF appeared, and Bruin altered its approach while remaining a major player in Western Slope recycling.

“It just was a good match because we’re the biggest independent waste hauler on the Western Slope. We’re Western Slope-focused, and we both saw the same need,” he said. “And eventually in December the city awarded us a contract for the partnership, and now we have an RP out to equipment providers to design and build a state-of-the-art recycling-sortation plant on the Halliburton site … that can support the entire Western Slope’s recycling-collection activities.”

And being the operator in a partnership instead of the owner of the entire operation was acceptable for Bruin Waste.

“The city desired to own it, and we were OK with being the operating partner,” Kendall said.

HOW GJ GOT HERE

The City of Grand Junction came to the conclusion it needed a material recovery facility and a partner to operate it after its dual-stream recycling program became an overwhelming success.

The city began phasing in dual-stream recycling to its recycling customers in March 2023 with the intent of providing it to all of its customers by 2025, but that end date is no longer possible.

“It’s been so successful, we have over 42 percent participation rate of those areas we phased in, so our facility got maxed out way sooner than we anticipated,” Valentine said. “We had to halt phasing in to the rest of the community our recycling program.

“So that was our need: to be able to find a solution to extend and enhance recycling. That’s our emphasis for the project.”

That led to seeking RFPs for partnership ideas to enhance recycling in Grand Junction, and Valentine said the city got proposals from WM, Republic Services and Bruin Waste Management.

Bruin Waste’s pervasive presence on the Western Slope helped it get approval in December 2024 from the Grand Junction City Council to be the partner/operator.

The city wanted to own the capital, Valentine said, because “we wanted to be able to control our own destiny, so to speak, meaning we’re going to be here. We’re solid, right? The city’s not going anywhere. Private companies have the right to, you know, go wherever they want.

“So anyway, long story short, we wanted to lock up the facility to be under the city’s name, the city and the land, to ensure that long term from here into the future it will be owned and it’ll be somewhat operated by the city.”

He added it made sense for Bruin Waste to let Grand Junction be the owner of the capital, because “the cost of financing for the city is a lot cheaper than the cost of financing for a private company.”

But rather than the city operating the facility, it wanted a partner, like it has for the Las Colonias Amphitheater, Grand Junction Convention Center and the Avalon Theatre. The city contracts with Oak View Group to manage those properties.

“Any time that the private sector and the public sector get partnership, that usually leads to efficiencies and increased expertise,” Valentine said.

He added Bruin Waste “has been in this recycling business for a long time and running these larger facilities, where the city, we have a very small facility here that’s very labor intensive, and we’re at capacity. That’s the need for this.”

And Bruin brings an enviable base of Western Slope recycling customers.

“In order to cover the expenses of this facility, we need volumes of recycling, so the more volume you have, the better you can recover the cost of operating the facility,” Valentine said.

MORE ABOUT RECYCLING

ROOM TO GROW

The material recovery facility being developed at 365 32 Road is larger than what the City of Grand Junction and Bruin Waste Management need, based on anticipated tonnage it will receive from around the Western Slope. For now, that is.

That’s OK, because Grand Junction General Services Director Jay Valentine said the city anticipates growth. And the solution is simple: “We’re building it so it can be expandable. … We don’t have enough tonnage at this point to utilize all of this, so it’s gonna be expandable.”

HOW THE MONEY GETS MADE

Valentine was midstream in his explanation of the two primary ways a material recovery facility gets revenue, then realized he needed to update it to three ways. It went like this:

“One of them is each entity that brings recycling to this facility will pay a tip fee. That means they basically unload the recycling at this facility to be processed. That tip fee’s usually based on a price per ton. Bruin Waste will pay the same tip fee as the city will pay, as any other private hauler that wants to bring that. That’s one source of revenue.

“The other source of revenue is what you get from selling the recycled material directly to the end market, meaning those recyclers, those companies that are going to turn this recycling into a usable product. That’s what a MRF is. There’s no kind of middle man. The MRF facility sells from the recycling facility directly to the end users and the mills that buy this material. 

“There’s another aspect to it, but it’s very – it’s a whole story in itself – but in 2026 there’s state legislation that’s called the Extended Producer Responsibility Act, and that provides revenue to these types of facilities and to the haulers. And the revenue is from those companies that sell packaged products in Colorado. And so they pay a fee to sell packaged products in Colorado.

“I think, and I’ll try to be succinct about this, I think the first reaction is often, ‘Well, they’re just going to pass that fee onto the consumer.’ However, these large companies – Amazon, Target, Walmart – they’ve created this alliance, and they’re imposing this upon themselves to generate more recycling material. And the reason that they want to do this is it’s cheaper for them to buy recycled packaging that’s come from recycled material. It’s cheaper for them to do that than to create packaging from raw material.

“So, there’s some revenue that comes from that as well, but that starts in 2026, and that’s a whole other complicated formula. So, there’s really three sources of revenue.”

MORE ABOUT THAT LEGISLATION

Bruin Waste Management President and CEO Jeff Kendall added this about the Extended Producer Responsibility Act: “PepsiCo and Procter & Gamble and Amazon are responsible for the net cost of recycling. So that’s what’s going to drive – or at least the goal of this program is it will drive more recycling – because what’ll happen is recycling will be at no cost to you as a resident. You won’t pay for us to come and collect your recycling anymore. Amazon will, in essence. … Canada, California and Oregon’s doing it. Europe has some semblance of it. 

“This project is a bit of a reaction to that legislation, to prepare for it, so that the Western Slope has infrastructure to grow.”

THIS PARTNERSHIP’S A BIG DEAL

Bruin Waste’s footprint was large, essentially the entire Western Slope. Now the foot that’s making the impression is sinking deeper with its partnership with Grand Junction on the MRF.

“It’s a big deal for us, because – listen, we’re about putting the right infrastructure in place for the Western Slope to have sustainable, long-term waste management, whether it’s trash, recycling, composting,” Kendall said. “That’s what Bruin’s mission is: to invest in the Western Slope to make sure it has the right infrastructure to grow and to maintain the beautiful place that it is.

“It’s big strategically, because the Western Slope needs it.”

GROWTH VIA CUSTOMER SERVICE

Bruin Waste continues to grow, because it finds services it can provide, and it does them well.

“We’ve been hard at work,” Kendall said. “We’re entrepreneurs, trying to build something great and create a great workplace that treats its employees well and does a good service to the community, you know?

“That’s what we’re passionate about. We’re passionate about customer service. That’s what we are, right? We’re a service business that most people take for granted, but if we didn’t do a good job, you would hear about it, you know?”

GROWING, BUT STAYING GROUNDED

Bruin Waste is becoming a larger company, but it doesn’t want to become one of the publicly-traded industry giants.

“We want to be the hometown, independent company that treats people right and does a good job and is a part of the community,” he said. “We answer our phones. We staff our offices with local folks that the people they’re servicing are their neighbors, the people they go to church with. We take a lot of pride in treating people the right way and not doing it the way the public companies do it.”

GROW YOUR BUSINESS WITH COMPOST

After Bruin Waste begins operating the MRF for the City of Grand Junction, what’s next?

There’s always something new, even from existing business, as Kendall said, “You may not think it, but our space actually evolves quite a bit year to year with legislation and environmental regulations changing.”

Of course, he’s not leaving his answer at that.

“Composting is something that we’re working on establishing and growing, because it’s proven that getting organics out of the landfill is a good thing,” Kendall said. “And it’s going to keep going that way, so that’s going to require new investment, new infrastructure, new trucks, routes, facilities. So, I think outside of recycling, composting is a focus area.

“And who knows where from there, whether it’s e-waste or what else increases. There’s a lot of different waste streams that probably could use more love.”