The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Private businesses teaming with town government to provide solution to problem
by Mark Reaman
In a recent display of a successful partnership between private business and government, there are now two dumpsters available in Crested Butte for backcountry campers. One is located at the Gas Café while the other is situated at Ace Hardware. The private businesses, both with gas pumps, are responsible for managing the dumpsters while the town will pay to empty them throughout the summer and fall.
For years, both those locations were the unwelcome recipients of summer trash pileups from those exiting the nearby backcountry on their way home after camping. With no other local alternative, campers would drop off bags of trash that included everything from spoiled food to diapers to bottles and cans.
The town of Crested Butte attempted to provide a dumpster near the Chamber of Commerce Visitor Center at the Four-way Stop parking lot but that too attracted copious amounts of trash including what appeared to be local drop-offs of everything from normal trash to couches and old TVs. They haven’t provided the dumpster service for the last two summers.
“I’m sure you recall what a nightmare the public camping dumpster was at the Four-way with people leaving the doors open, dropping inappropriate trash, and generally misusing it,” said Crested Butte Parks, Recreation, Open Space and Trails director Janna Hansen. “Eric Tunkey of the Gas Café approached the town recently and felt that with the oversight he and his staff could provide at his establishment they could mitigate those problems. In an effort to be fair, I reached out to the Sweitzers at Ace Hardware, and they were also excited to have a dumpster.”
Hansen said how to handle backcountry trash is an issue that has gone round-and-round at Gunnison County’s STOR (Sustainable Tourism and Outdoor Recreation) committee, and no one has been able to come up with a good solution. “This is something totally new and we are hopeful that it could work well for all involved. It will help our local gas stations not get overrun with trash and will provide our backcountry users with a place to dump as they come into town while providing the necessary oversight to avoid misuse,” she said.
Trying something out-of-the-box, Tunkey from the Gas Café approached town hall two weeks ago to see if an arrangement could be worked out that benefitted everyone.
“We have the normal trashcans out by the gas pumps, and we put up signs asking people to not put camp trash in there. But people would deposit diapers, and other trash and it just gets to be too much,” he said. “We were pulling the three cans three times a day to prevent them from overflowing. Or they’d put the trash around and on the main dumpster when we weren’t looking and the birds would rip it apart.
“We started dealing with it in Covid. It was insane. So, a couple years ago Trent from Ace and I went to the town asking for help,” Tunkey continued. “They had a couple iterations like the dumpster at the Four-way, but it got abused and last year there wasn’t anything. So, it went right back to the trashcans by the gas pumps.”
Tunkey said after not hearing any new ideas about how to deal with the problem this spring, he went to the town. “I knew we needed something. I talked to town manager Dara MacDonald and suggested we put a dumpster at the Gas Café in a parking spot. I was worried about losing the parking space in town but she said given the circumstances it would work, so she was agreeable. She touched base with council and the next day she sent a text message asking where I wanted it located. I sent her a picture and three days later a dumpster showed up. It was great. The response from town was instant and they were a pleasure to deal with. I’ve never had that experience before. It was fast and efficient.”
A sign on the trashcans by the gas pumps instructs people with camp trash to visit the register inside the Gas Café. They are then given a combination to open the dumpster and put their camping trash inside.
Town pays for the dumpster and while he initially charged a $2.50 per use fee for the hassle, that has been removed so the dumpster is now free. “The campers are good for the town, and we need to keep the forest and the woods nice and clean,” Tunkey said. “We ask people to come here; we should help make their visit easy.”
Tunkey said the dumpster gets used four or five times a day right now and he realizes it is still not peak season. He expects July to be very busy.
“Everyone has been respectful, and we’ve had no problems,” he said. “It’s been fine so far, but we know the Fourth of July is almost here. It makes sense to provide the service. It’s logical to have something like this somewhere. You have to deal with the waste. You can’t just ignore it. It makes sense and is pretty cheap.”
Over at Ace the same attitude is in play. “We know people collect trash when they are camping,” said Ty Sweitzer. “They are going to put it somewhere and we’ve taken a big brunt of it since Covid. If this helps keeps the nearby backcountry cleaner, it’s a good thing.”
He too said the problem spiked around the time of Covid and the hope was that the town would come up with a solution but nothing permanent was ever implemented. Last summer, there were no alternatives and so this year to have a partnership between government and private businesses is a win-win.
The dumpster for backcountry camping is located on the north side of Ace and Sweitzer expects it will help provide some relief from trash piling up by the gas pump trashcans and the hardware store’s primary dumpster. “People would just leave it and then we’d be responsible for taking care of it,” he said. “That was never fun, especially when the bears got into it.”
Hansen said the town is paying for the two dumpsters through Halloween out of the Crested Butte general fund, which also pays for the Big Belly trash receptacles on Elk. She said Waste Management will start emptying the dumpsters once a week but could increase it to twice a week if needed. She said when town last provided a dumpster at the Four-way in 2023, the units were costing $338.34 a month.
