State leaders aim for sustainability through a new economic model

By JACE DICOLA

Jace.DiCola@gjsentinel.com

Even though the Circular Economy Development Center (CEDC) opened in Colorado only about six months ago, success stories are already coming in.

Several community leaders gathered on Tuesday at Riverside Education Center, including Gov. Jared Polis, to discuss the program’s success stories and how the CEDC hopes to expand its economic model throughout Colorado despite the state’s geographic disconnect — and has begun the process of expanding by opening a satellite site at the Grand Junction Business Incubator Center (BIC).

CEDC Executive Director Laurie Johnson explained that this initiative combines economics with environmentalism by emphasizing the ability to effectively reclaim used materials and maximize a product’s lifecycle.

The BIC has played a major role in the CEDC’s pursuit of this goal, as the almost 40-year-old organization maintains a large portfolio of formerly and currently managed businesses that they can connect with the CEDC. One of these businesses, Surpstone, is owned by Jill Layton and produces repurposed plastic into stone. The company produces stone by incorporating discarded plastics as an aggregate.

However, the immediate benefits of this program were not clear to all attendants. Kenneth Riskey, manager of E-Bricks, Grand Junction’s LEGO store, questioned the level of immediate incentive to business owners by recalling his own troubles with being environmental and economic at the same time.

“We will not only buy back the product after they’re done using it, but we buy back all the recyclables that go along with it, so that closes the loop,’ Riskey said. “But, we buy back literally hundreds of tons of products, and I buy storage facilities just to house all of our products. We have all this material that’s sitting here, and the bottleneck is the process to recycle or resort these products so that we can market them again. The back of our store is all of the recycled stuff, and it takes so long to get it back into a marketable position.”

Johnson said assisting with these logistical issues is largely what the CEDC is intended for, so while there are certainly roadblocks to becoming sustainable environmentally and economically, she believes that connecting with the CEDC is a solid first step for any business facing similar issues.

Dalida Bollig, the Business Incubator Center CEO, noted their partnership with the CEDC has been successful since its start. However, she said a major barrier to fully incorporating a circular economy across Colorado that they will encounter is the state’s geography and resulting transportation issues.

“We realize that there’s a lot of disconnectivity. We have a mountain range that disconnects us, and so … we need transportation to be really strong so that our people in the Western Slope can feel that connection and have these opportunities to go around and create jobs,” Bollig said.

Regardless, Bollig said the success of the partnership between the BIC and CEDC has already been proven across western Colorado, so increasing their scope to the entire state is certainly feasible.

“We believe that this is scalable and there is an opportunity to also connect (businesses) to resources on the Front Range where you have a lot of bigger scale manufacturing,” Bollig said.