GOLDEN — Workers in the nation’s largest brewery have transformed their operations and no longer send any garbage to dumps.

After nearly two years of developing ways to divert 135 tons of trash each month, MillerCoors leaders on Monday announced that all waste now is recycled.

Two years ago, brewery managers were paying Waste Management to haul those tons of glass, spent grain and hops, plastics and metals for burial in metro landfills. MillerCoors now projects a $1 million a year revenue boost from the sale of recycled materials at the Golden plant alone.

Hops and barley, prime ingredients in the annual production of 346 million gallons of beer, is trucked away daily and used to feed cattle.

Discarded glass is sent to a nearby plant that makes new bottles.

Cardboard moves to mills. Plastic wrapping becomes grist for composite decking at homes. Metals are hauled to scrap yards for re-sale into global commodities markets.

Making this shift “is important,” said Phil Savastano, MillerCoors’ vice president in charge of the brewery. “We feel that, in order to compete long into the future, we need to protect our resources and maintain our environment.”

First established in 1873, MillerCoors’ brewery in Golden has grown into a 9 million-square-foot facility — the nation’s largest brewery.

Starting in September 2011, MillerCoors leaders embraced longtime employee Kelly Harris’ efforts to lead other workers in an overhaul of plant operations to rechannel waste.

“I’ve never met a person who wants to damage the planet intentionally,” said Harris, who had helped eliminate waste at smaller MillerCoors breweries.

When he arrived in Golden to lead the brewery’s waste-reduction program, he kept his status as an hourly employee. That was essential, Harris said. “I’m not the salaried person saying: ‘You need to do this.’ It took a lot of work, a lot of conversations with every person on the floor.”

The trick was to give workers a system to do what most already were doing at home. Creating it required an investment of $1 million for balers, choppers, compactors, colored cans and signage.

First, Harris removed personal trash cans from every office and got rid of large garbage bins on plant floors.

He and fellow workers replaced these with colored bins — aluminum cans went to yellow, plastic shrink wrap to white, scrap metal to gray, and wood to green for eventual grinding into mulch.

Remaining smaller traditional garbage cans were colored red — signaling “stop.”

As workers gradually reduced waste sent to landfills, meeting monthly targets of 100 tons, 80 tons, 20 tons, company leaders displayed scorecards, praised progress and celebrated with gifts such as T-shirts and tree saplings.

A small amount of residual waste, such as cafeteria food slop and floor sweepings, is trucked to a waste-to-energy facility in Oklahoma that produces electricity.

Bruce Finley: 303-954-1700, twitter.com/finleybruce or bfinley@denverpost.com