Water Pik’s blue boxes move like hot cakes

Evidence of Northern Colorado’s understated box shortage took center stage earlier this summer when local consumers gobbled up a surplus of more than 4,000 boxes left outside the Household Hazardous Waste Collection Facility in Fort Collins — in a matter of weeks.

“They’re all gone,´ said Larimer County Department of Natural Resources hazardous-waste manager Scott Doyle, suggesting the community’s need for 4,000 blue, 24-inch long, 20-inch wide, four-inch deep plastic boxes was no mystery.

“They were probably used for everything from feeding critters to putting kids’ toys in them and sliding them under a bed,” he said.

Even without an eye for statistics, the Eye can see that’s a lot of beds: the Fort Collins community bagged an average of more than 550 of the blue boxes a week between June 20 and August 7.

“A lot went even before our press release,´ said county environmental educator Cheryl Kolus. “I think they were popular with teachers, daycare and school projects and were used to hold student supplies. I think some people used them for planting boxes.”

The boxes came from Teledyne Water Pik, which originally contacted the City of Fort Collins to explore the possibility of recycling the overstocked boxes.

“We changed a process, the way we assemble things here, and we had these excess containers,´ said Teledyne manufacturing engineer Bob Seybert, noting that Teledyne did not want to send the boxes to a landfill. “They were clean and very usable. We recycle other stuff here. It’s part of the culture.”

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