Next to the car wash at 601 Center Dr., the Town of Grand Lake runs a self-service trash drop-off that takes prepaid bags and nothing else. A blue 25-gallon bag costs $5. A green 40-gallon bag costs $8. You can buy them at Town Hall, Grand Lake Hardware, Grand Lake Center and Mountain Food Market, and a map of the site is printed on every bag.
This fall, Grand County residents got free curbside recycling for the first time, and the bins don't stop at that drop-off. They go out through the county's private trash haulers, to households that pay one of them for trash pickup. In Grand Lake, whether recycling comes to your curb depends on which trash setup your household uses.
The bin comes with a hauler account
Sky-Hi News reported on Oct. 15 that every Grand County resident now has access to residential curbside recycling. The service is single-stream, so all recyclables go in one bin, and the bin costs nothing extra. The condition is that you sign up for trash collection with a participating hauler. The three companies named are Ranch Creek Waste, The Trash Company and Waste Management, and each told the paper it collects trash for any Grand County resident who signs up.
The three haulers are rolling out on different schedules:
- Ranch Creek Waste started delivering bins on Oct. 1. By mid-October it had dropped off about 1,000, which the company put at roughly 70 percent of its current customers, and it expected to finish by the end of October.
- The Trash Company was scheduled to begin delivering bins to current customers by mid-November, according to its Granby site manager. On its own website, the company says residential recycling will be free for customers and that details on implementation and billing will follow as timelines are confirmed.
- Waste Management expects to start providing bins in the first quarter of 2027.
The bins are free because of Colorado's Extended Producer Responsibility law, passed in 2022. Companies that sell packaged products pay fees to Circular Action Alliance, the state's producer responsibility organization. The alliance can then reimburse eligible recycling providers for 100 percent of their net recycling costs. Circular Action Alliance says Colorado regulators approved its final program plan on Dec. 9, 2025, and that the program started in early 2026. Under the plan, materials on a statewide minimum recyclables list are to be collected across the state, and some areas may also collect additional materials.
That funding covers recycling service from the haulers. Grand Lake's bag program sits outside it.
Where the bag program's recycling comes from
The town describes Pay-As-You-Throw as trash service for people in the Grand Lake area who may not subscribe to pickup. The haulers give the free bin only to customers who sign up for collection, so a household that buys blue and green bags at Mountain Food Market and drives them to Center Drive doesn't get one.
Those households recycle on the same lot. According to the town's page, the Grand Resource & Recycle Coalition runs recycling at the Pay-As-You-Throw facility on Saturday mornings from 9 a.m. to noon and asks for a $3 donation per car. The coalition is a nonprofit that started in 2010. Its own history credits Granby resident Nancy Franz and other community members with founding it.
The memorandum of understanding between the town and the coalition sets out how the station runs, and the schedule matters in November:
- Season: Volunteers open the station every Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon, or until the containers fill, from Memorial Day weekend through Oct. 31. The agreement allows winter service to drop to twice a month if both sides agree.
- Containers: The coalition contracts with Waste Management or another approved vendor for at least three six-yard containers, emptied once a week.
- Town's share: The town maintains the site, including snow plowing and video monitoring. It also reimburses the coalition $3,000 a year, paid as a single annual payment.
- Donations: The $3 per drop stays with the coalition to cover its operating costs.
That puts Grand Lake's two kinds of households on different footing this winter. Hauler customers get pickup at the curb. Bag users have a volunteer station whose weekly season under the agreement ends Oct. 31, with any winter Saturdays set by the town and the coalition together. For this winter's Saturday hours, Town Hall at (970) 627-3435 is the contact the town lists for the program.
The bag program's costs are under review
The town's bag program is also getting a close look at Town Hall this fall. In early October, Sky-Hi News covered a 2027 budget workshop where two sets of figures on Pay-As-You-Throw didn't match. The budget packet projected a $31,621 deficit for the program, while Town Manager Steve Kudron estimated a loss of $8,000 to $9,000. Staff said some bag-sale revenue had been recorded under membership revenue and other categories, so the trash numbers still needed to be reconciled.
At the next workshop on Oct. 12, Sky-Hi News reported that the program's costs again drew scrutiny. Kudron said he would add a full-year recycling contribution to the figures. The board had not adopted the 2027 budget at that meeting.
So recycling for bag users is still a line item the town pays for, while hauler customers get recycling paid for by packaging producers.
What goes in the bin
Accepted materials depend on the hauler. Each company's own list is the one that applies to its bin.
Ranch Creek Waste accepts:
- Paper, including newspaper, cardboard, magazines, catalogs, junk mail, office paper, frozen-food boxes and beverage cartons
- Plastic food and drink containers, bottles and tubs
- Aluminum, steel and tin cans
- Glass bottles and jars
It does not accept electronics, batteries, food, liquids, Styrofoam, scrap metal, aerosol cans, loose plastic bags or yard waste.
The Trash Company lists beverage bottles, jugs, jars and food containers; newspaper, magazines, books and office paper; most glass bottles, jugs and jars; and aluminum and steel cans and bottles.
Waste Management's Grand Lake page lists plastic bottles, cans, paper and cardboard, and asks that everything be clean and dry. Glass isn't on that list.
RecycleOn's statewide Colorado recycling guide covers the same general categories and adds egg cartons, plastic buckets and paper bags. Its rules are that items should be empty, dry and loose, not bagged. It lists glass bottles and jars but says to check locally, and Waste Management's list is a case where glass doesn't appear.
Items for the Granby drop-offs
Some items can't go in any curbside bin or the Saturday station, and the town's own Pay-As-You-Throw site refuses them. The town's banned list includes TVs, computers, monitors, printers, laptops, game consoles, refrigerators, freezers, car batteries, household chemicals and petroleum products.
For most of these, the town's page sends residents to Granby:
| What you have | Where it goes |
|---|---|
| Electronics and computers | Grand E-Cycle at the Granby Transfer Station, 726 County Road 612 |
| Car and equipment batteries, scrap metal | Carquest Auto Parts, 62487 US Hwy 40 |
| Rechargeable and cell phone batteries, thermostats, compact fluorescents | ACE Hardware, 627 W. Agate Ave., free |
| Ink cartridges, confidential paper shredding | Alpine West Business Products, 224 E. Agate Ave. |
| Ink cartridges, packing peanuts | Kopy Kat Office, downtown Granby, free |
The ACE Hardware store on Agate Avenue also takes regular recyclables. The town's page lists a free single-stream drop-off there on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to noon, or until the containers fill. For a bag-program household already driving to Granby on a Saturday, that is the second weekend option.
What the town code says about the bin
New bins mean new containers out on driveways. Grand Lake's posted code strongly recommends wildlife-proof or wildlife-resistant containers unless they are kept inside a wildlife-resistant enclosure. It requires containers to be secured and latched whenever they aren't being filled. Containers can be at the street only from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. on pickup day and can't be left on the public right-of-way at other times. The most recent amendment listed on the posted code dates to 2011. This is general information, not legal advice, so check the current town code and Town Hall for your address.
Pickup days come from the hauler. The Trash Company's online schedule asks for your home address and doesn't post one day for everyone, so a new recycling bin may come with its own collection day.
If you're closing on a Grand Lake home this winter or setting up a second home before the snow settles in, trash service is one of the accounts to put in the new owner's name, and now it decides whether recycling comes to the curb too. Erin Life can help you sort out which provider serves your address, along with the other setup details in a Grand County move. Start Your Grand County Search.
