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.jpg) For 30 years Summit Recycling Project/High Country Conservation Center has been working to provide practical solutions to resource conservation. Our original mission to improve awareness and appreciation of our environment and to assist in preservation of same has changed little over three decades.
In 1976, Tim McClure founded
Summit Recycling Project (SRP) as “a non-profit educational-experimental
organization to promote resource recovery and to reduce
wastefulness.” Tim’s program flourished
for seven years as he and volunteers collected recyclable
materials from county residents and began to foster the
conservation ethic that still exists today. Unfortunately,
Tim’s lobbying for government assistance and funding
was met without success, forcing him to close SRP’s
doors in February 1983. Two years later, Tim died
in an avalanche.
In 1989, Bob and Rose Wentzell took on Tim McClure’s philosophy to renew SRP’s operations. One day per week, two recycling centers began accepting nine recyclable materials. Since then, the program has expanded to accept more than 20 different recyclable materials and has grown to address emerging waste streams like used electronics and wood waste from fire mitigation efforts.
Recently, the Summit County Government institutionalized the nonprofit’s recycling operations into a stable government department. After careful thought, the organization’s board and staff have realized that even with this significant shift in recycling operations, our work is not done and our mission is not complete. In fact, this change gave us the perfect opportunity to do more work on waste reduction education and more formally address other resource conservation issues.
As we look to the future, we envision programs, services, and advocacy in the areas of waste reduction, energy conservation, green building, and even climate change. To formalize this change, SRP changed its name to the High Country Conservation Center (HC3) in January 2006.
In the late 1970’s, Tim McClure struggled to convince the County Government that it should embrace and support recycling. Today, we have finally reached that point, and we are proud of our successes. We think Tim would be proud too.
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