The city of Durango is ahead of the curve when it comes to recycling. This fall, councilors will decide how seriously the city – and residents – should take composting.
City Council was presented with six broad composting regulation options for residential, commercial and internal city requirements in early June. Some options would mandate composting for residents and/or businesses. Some options would require the city itself to step up its game. Other options would continue or broaden current composting efforts such as the city’s partnership with Table to Farm Compost.
Early survey results show participating residents prefer a focus on enhanced curbside collection services and improved spring and fall city cleanups to heavier handed methods of increasing composting in Durango’s community.
Resource Recycling Systems Consultant Rachel Perlman said a Strategic Technical Expertise for the Public Sector survey of 237 responses showed 81% of respondents supported a requirement for residents to have a regular collection of food scraps. Ninety-four percent of respondents supported the same requirement for businesses.
Those surveyed would also be more likely to support required composting if collection rates were tied to bin sizes similarly to how trash collection services are priced, she said.
The options provided to City Council through the STEPS study are:
Eco-Cycle Consulting Manager Rachel Wheeler said the composting status quo is residents and businesses can opt into food scraps collection provided by Table to Farm, with which the city contracted in 2021 to provide optional curbside compost collection. The city offers a discount to income-qualified residents that covers 90% of compost service costs.
She said about 15% of the city’s waste hauling customers subscribe to Table to Farm’s curbside compost program.
Wheeler said Louisville, Lafayette and Golden are examples of other Colorado cities that have required residential compost collection services.
Generally, residents pay a mandatory fee for a city or contracted hauling service that collects organic materials such as food scraps and yard trimmings, she said. The system is similar to trash and recycling collections and fees on utility bills.
Wheeler said Louisville, Lafayette and Golden use a “pay-as-you-throw” model, in which residents’ fees are based on the sizes of their compost containers. Residents there can opt out of receiving a compost bin, but they still pay the fee.
She said Denver is slightly different in that the city hauls trash, recycling and composting for residents, but residents must opt into receiving the compost bin.
“It’s no additional cost in all of those communities,” she said. “That’s a system that really incentivizes people to try to throw less in their trash bin and to put more in the recycling and compost streams.”
Denver, Boulder, Aspen and Longmont also require commercial entities, including businesses, government agencies and multifamily residential buildings with more than eight units to use a compost collection service through a hauler of their choice, she said. Fort Collins also applies the same requirements to grocery stores.
A policy prohibiting residents and businesses from disposing of organics in the trash is comparable to banning electronics from landfills, Wheeler said. Enforcement would be through fines, warnings or even refusal by a hauler to pick up one’s trash if it contains “obvious amounts of organic materials.”
“This leaves it up to individuals to decide how to avoid putting organics in the landfill and provides more options for people on how they want to participate in composting. But it can be harder to enforce,” she said.
She said the Glenwood Springs, for example, disincentivizes organic waste dumping into the South Canyon Landfill with hefty tipping fees. Organics can be dropped off at a designated brush pile at the landfill.
If the city were to focus on its existing programs rather than implement new requirements, it could offer continuous yard trimmings collections instead of twice annually during spring and fall cleanups; provide drop-off sites for residents to bring their compostable materials; or offer more seasonal collections at designated sites.
The city could also lead by example by requiring composting at city buildings, Wheeler said.
“It could help build a culture of composting,” she said.
A STEPS focus group of Durango stakeholders showed participants were most interested in improvement and expansion of current city services. There was resistance to instituting a diversion requirement or prohibiting residents or businesses from throwing away compostable materials.
While mandatory composting would divert more organics from the landfill, it would also potentially impose increased costs to residents and businesses.
“They did show mixed support for requiring single-family collections service and the same mixed support for requiring commercial organics service,” Wheeler said.
She said the state’s new Producer Responsibility Program, which will reimburse communities for recycling fees by collecting fees from producers of recyclable materials, would potentially make it more feasible for municipalities to add or expand compost services.
City Sustainability Manager Marty Pool said spring and fall cleanups are paid for by trash and recycling fee revenues and carried out by the city’s streets crews.
“Essentially, the city uses that fee to supplement the cost of providing those services by the streets crew,” he said.
The spring and fall used to represent a “lull” in demand for street crews, which is why the spring and fall cleanups were possible. That’s just not the case anymore, however, he said.
“That lull is decreasing and our streets crew is really maxed out,” he said. “There’s not any staff or equipment capacity to really take on regular, communitywide collections to the degree that you would see for spring and fall cleanup.
If the city were to increase the frequency of cleanups, it would have to rethink how to fund operations, he said.
“We do offer – and have for a long, long time – bulk collections for people,” he said. “But typically, that’s not something residents take the city on for their summertime yard waste collections.”
Reader Comments