Times have changed in Pueblo, a city once known for producing a good portion of the nation’s steel. Of course, while the steel mill fueled a booming tax base and fed families across all southern Colorado it was also belching tons of pollutants into the air. But those days are over and now, instead of Pueblo having some of the state’s dirtiest air—perhaps even the dirtiest—the city’s air is now among the cleanest in Colorado.
“Pueblo’s air quality is very good,” said Trysten Garcia, spokesman for County Health and Environment. The days of smog fouling the air and compromising the city’s mountain view are history. Bad air quality in Pueblo, he said, presents “a very low risk for people with respiratory issues.” The city, said the Public Information Officer, actually provides an air quality measurement “every ten minutes.”
Of course, while the steel mill downsizing has effectively eliminated one source of bad air, there are things that can’t be controlled, including blowing dust that also has an effect on people with health issues. “Normally,” said Garcia, “when seasons are changing, when you have dry conditions, is when we’re notifying the public” to curtail outdoor activities or even remain inside. “We’re always displaying real time air quality prominently” on the county’s web page.
While the bad air that once plagued Pueblo has disappeared, there is another public health issue that is often overlooked but one that Pueblo and one of its companies, 3R Recycling, are facing head-on. The challenge is called e-waste, and it goes well beyond southern Colorado.
The ‘E’ in e-waste stands for electronic. As the world races into the 21st century, it is growing not just a mountain but a mountain range of no longer useful or needed electronics, everything from toasters to toys to toothbrushes.
For too many people, it may be just a useless PC or a once all-the-rage electronic gadget that they’re loading up for the landfill. But for people like Colin Hughes, operations manager for Pueblo’s 3R Technology Solutions, it’s hazardous waste that can and does slowly decompose, leaking toxins into the ground and water.
3R Technology Solutions stays busy not just recycling these things but also encouraging people to think twice about what they might be throwing away. “Not only is it dangerous,” said 3R’s Operations Manager Colin Hughes to thoughtlessly head to a landfill with old electronics, “but it is also illegal.”
Hughes’ company works with several municipalities and businesses in southern Colorado, including Pueblo, Huerfano and Las Animas County governments, to keep no longer useful and out of date electronics out of landfills.
“With the way technology is,” said Hughes, “people tend to upgrade every 2-3 years.” Advances in technology make it almost essential that old computers and outdated electronics be replaced. That’s where companies like 3R come in.
“We try and recycle and reuse as much as we can,” Hughes said. His company combs over the PCs, tablets, old televisions that people no longer use and removes anything and everything that can be recycled. That includes wire, circuits and even plastic. Doing so, he said, keeps toxic chemicals essential in the manufacturing process, poisons like lead, mercury and cadmium, from seeping into the soil and ground water. Still, it’s an uphill battle, not only for organizations like Pueblo’s 3R, but for the entire world.
In a recent white paper published by the environmental group The Roundup, an organization dedicated to promoting environmental issues, it was estimated that 57 million tons of e-waste was generated in 2021 with a projected growth of 2 million tons a year. Only 20 percent of all e-waste is collected and properly recycled, said The Roundup, adding that China, India and the U.S. are the biggest producers of this waste.
Dealing with e-waste will continue to be a Pueblo, a Colorado and a world challenge for the foreseeable future. But for now, the hub city of southern Colorado has reasonably solved the issue that once preceded any description of it, bad air.
The county’s health information officer said that Puebloans deal with bad air quality just a handful of times each year. This year the trend was up. Offering just a guess to the number of days when bad air lingered over Pueblo, Garcia fixed the number in the “high single digits…maybe ten this year.” The big culprits for the spike, the colossal wild fires in Canada and blowing dust.
