Styrofoam Recycling

Our ‘Styrofoam Corral’ Closes Forever on Aug. 31

For over a decade and a half, Golden Real Estate has hosted a “Styrofoam Corral” behind its former location at 17695 S. Golden Road. Perhaps you or someone you know brought some of the 36,000 cubic yards of the Expanded Polystyrene (Styrofoam is a brand name) that we have kept out of landfills.

Well, we sold that building last week to Joe & Stacy Fowler, proprietors of The Golden Hayride, and they need the space currently occupied by the Corral for other purposes. Our contract of sale requires us to close and remove the Styrofoam Corral by August 31st. We had hoped to find another host for this valuable community amenity, but have had no luck so far. Call Jim Smith ASAP at 303-525-1851 if you can help find a new home for it!

After Aug. 31, 2023, you’ll have to take your Styrofoam to SustainAbility Recycling’s facility at 6240 W. 54th Avenue in Arvada. Their website is www.sustainability-recycling.com.

The ‘Styrofoam Corral’ Needs a New Home!

For over 15 years, Golden Real Estate has operated a “Styrofoam Corral” behind its former office at 17695 S. Golden Road. During that time, the general public has brought us so much Styrofoam to recycle that we estimate we’ve kept over 40,000 cubic yards of the material out of landfills.

At least twice a month (including tomorrow!) we fill our box truck with what has been left in the Corral and take it to Atlas Molded Products in Denver, where it is densified for reuse to manufacture new products. It’s not shipped elsewhere.

In January 2022, Golden Real Estate moved to its downtown Golden storefront (shown above), and our former office building is now pending sale to another Golden business. (More about that later.) The contract of sale requires that the Styrofoam Corral be removed by August 31st, so we need to find another business which can take over this popular service.

If you or someone you know would like to host the Styrofoam Corral, we will make it easy for you/them, moving the chain-link enclosure and signage plus the motion-detecting enunciator which gives instructions to visitors. I will also personally train you/them, and our box truck will be available for every trip to Atlas Molded Products or another recycler.

We know that the public values this service. We have a donation box attached to the corral which receives over $100 per month in cash donations from visitors, more than covering the cost of bags and gas for the truck.

If you can help avoid terminating this valuable public service, please call me, Jim Smith, at 303-525-1851. Thanks!

Since our real estate office moved from 17695 S. Golden Road to 1214 Washington Avenue in downtown Golden, people have been asking if our Styrofoam Corral has moved.

The answer is “no,” we still maintain the Styrofoam Corral behind our old office (which we still own) and still take two truckloads of Styrofoam to the Centennial Containers in Denver every month, keeping over 200 cubic yards of the material out of landfills every year!

One truckload of Styrofoam from Golden Real Estate ends up being just one bar of “densified” polystyrene on these half-ton skids which are then delivered to a company which makes new products from it.

Our Commitment: Keeping Styrofoam Out of Landfills

One element of Golden Real Estate’s commitment to sustainability is our acceptance of polystyrene in the Styrofoam Corral behind our office on South Golden Road. Perhaps you have wondered what we do with all that Styrofoam.

At least twice every month we fill our truck with what everyone (including us) calls Styrofoam, but that’s a brand name. The generic term is expanded polystyrene foam, or EPS. We take each truckload to Centennial Containers southeast of Peoria Street and I-70. There the material, which is 95% air, is “densified,” compressed into those foot-square bars shown at right, which are then stacked on pallets each weighing over 1,000 pounds. One of our truck loads might make just one of those bars of compressed material! Eventually a semi trailer filled with those pallets is taken to an American company which recycles those bars into new polystyrene or other plastic-based products.

We used to take our loads to Alpine Waste’s recycling facility located northwest of the I-70/I-25 interchange, but they ship their densified polystyrene to China. When China cut down on accepting plastic waste from the United States, we switched to Centennial Containers and have found them easier to work with, too.

Our polystyrene recycling is only one part of Golden Real Estate’s commitment to sustainability which won us our second Sustainability Award from the City of Golden in 2020. Since receiving our first award in 2010, we transitioned our building to Net Zero Energy in 2017 by removing our natural gas meter and installing a heat pump mini-split system to heat and cool our office electrically. Our 20-kW solar photovoltaic system provides all the electricity for powering our office as well as charging our five Tesla vehicles and providing free EV charging to the general public in our parking lot.

We and Our Truck Go the Extra Mile for Our Clients!

Our clients have put a lot of miles on this box truck, saving them thousands of dollars on moving costs. They also get free moving boxes, packing paper and bubble wrap. They only pay for the gas used. The truck is also used twice a week by BGoldN to pick up food from Food Bank of the Rockies and by other non-profits, including Family Promise of Greater Denver and the Golden Chamber of Commerce.

We also use it ourselves every couple weeks to take truckloads of polystyrene (aka “Styrofoam,” a brand name) to a reprocessing center in Aurora, keeping over 200 cubic yards of the material out of landfills every year. People from all over Jefferson County (and beyond) bring their block white polystyrene to the Styrofoam Corral behind our office.