Volunteer offer convinces Bestway to keep recycling bins outside Safeway

       An 11th-hour agreement has saved Bestway Disposal's “Manitou/ Westside Recycle Center” in the Safeway parking lot on West Colorado Avenue near 32nd Street.
       “We've worked it out with Safeway to keep it,” said Bestway President Phil Kiemel. “They were giving us problems, because it was such a mess all the time.”
       Bestway-posted signs at the area had announced until last week that it would be shut down July 1.
       Kiemel said a big reason for keeping the service going was a resumption of the Manitou Springs volunteer-support effort that had worked with the trash-hauling company to start the area in 2004.
       A member of the committee could not be reached at press deadline, but Kiemel said the plan is for the volunteers to help monitor the site for problems.
       The free area consists of two large, metal bins. One bin has compartments for newspapers, magazines, phone books, plastics and aluminum. The other bin takes cardboard.
       Bestway still has concerns about the service, Kiemel said. Instructions to the public are listed on signs that have been posted at the site.
       The instructions ask for the following:
  • No trash.
  • No glass or styrofoam.
  • People to recycle on weekdays instead of weekends. (According to Kiemel, his crews clean up the site Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but the heavy amount of weekend use overwhelms the bins.)
  • Businesses not to use the cardboard area, which is intended for residential use only.
  • People not to crawl into the aluminum bin and steal the metal. “This one item makes this site possible,” the sign reads. “When it is stolen, the company [that] provides this service loses money.”
           For more information, call Bestway at 633-8709.

    Westside Pioneer article