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MATTRESS RECYCLING FLOPS IN NEIGHBORHOOD

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Is Colorado Springs being meanies to the greenies?

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Some think so after officials told Tim Keenan he had to move his mattress recycling business out of a warehouse behind his rental house on Costilla Street in the Hillside neighborhood east of downtown.

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Keenan thought he’d found a great new business opportunity when he started collecting old mattresses and stripped them for their metal springs, wood, fabric and foam.

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With scrap metal selling for $200 a pound, it would be easy to recycle. A recycler in Utah pays for foam. Wood is valuable as firewood. And fabric has a little bit of value.

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It was win-win. The city is overflowing with old mattresses, officials say. Landfills are overflowing, as well, and mattresses are a huge problem because they don’t compress well.

But Keenan ran into one small problem . . . his A Better Tomorrow Recycling business doesn’t mesh well in neighborhoods.

A homeowners association “got grumpy” when he started stripping mattresses in his garage.

So he moved to a house on Costilla, a busy commercial street east of downtown. The house included a large warehouse in back and seemed perfect for his business.

And everything was fine until his truck broke down and he needed his warehouse to work on the vehicle.

 Mattresses started piling up in the driveway off the alley.

 Neighbors complained. An officer from the city Code Enforcement Agency came out and found the mess.

She also discovered the recycling business operating in a commercial zone. Recycling is 0nly allowed in industrial zones. It had to go.

Keenan is frustrated. Everyone seems to agree there is a huge need for a mattress recycling business. He’s in a building that has housed businesses for years. It’s not a pristine neighborhood. His operation is off an alley and is surrounded by a locksmith, mini-warehouses, a roofing company and more.

But recycling just doesn’t fit, officials say. Keenan has until Nov. 15 to end his recycling activities. He hopes to move to a new warehouse at 2512 Weston Road, just off Delta Drive near Hancock Expressway on the southeast side of the city.

Tim Keenan describes how he strips mattresses, separating their metal springs from their wood frames, foam and fabric in this Oct. 29, 2010, photo

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MATTRESS RECYCLING FLOPS IN NEIGHBORHOOD is a post from: Side Streets


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