Denver asks residents to rethink recycling.

Denver Recycles, a program of the Department of Public Works/Solid Waste Management, has launched an expanded residential recycling program.

The new residential recycling program employs single-stream collection and includes seven new materials: corrugated cardboard, junk mail, paperboard, office paper, magazines and catalogs, phone books and brown paper bags.

"This new expanded program will be the first of its kind in Colorado, and we are hopeful that it will make it possible to divert almost twice the amount of materials from the landfill," Charlotte Pitt, recycling program manager for Denver Recycles, says in a press release.

Residents' current recycling bins will slowly be replaced with new, larger wheeled recycling carts. According to a release from Denver Recycles, it will take up to five years to replace the collection bins.

Denver can expand the materials it collects as a result of its partnership with Recycle America Alliance (RAA) and its redesigned and retrofitted Franklin Street Recycling Materials Recovery Facility (MRF), according to Denver Recycles.

RAA has installed single-stream processing equipment at the MRF. Denver Recycles says the MRF is capable of processing an estimated 30 tons of material per hour. RAA hopes to process 4,000 tons of material per month initially, growing to 10,000 tons per month by 2008.