Our City is Growing: Is our waste and recycling system ready?

Our City is Growing: Is our waste and recycling system ready?

It’s well known that Denver is one of the fastest growing cities in the United States.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Denver had the second largest growth rate of any

city between July 1, 2013 – July 1, 2014, at 2.4%.1, 2 When a city grows, its industries and

infrastructure must expand accordingly to accommodate this growth. Denver is seeing

the construction and development of more housing, more businesses, more restaurants,

and more grocery stores, all of which produce more waste.3 But is our waste system ready

to handle it all?

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Single Family Residential Waste — Denver’s on TrackFor single-family homes and small multifamily units (7 or fewer), Denver Solid Waste Management (DSWM) does a robust job of providing solid waste management to almost 174,000 households in the City and County of Denver every year totaling about 220,000 tons of trash and 30,000 tons of recyclables. The city is planning to

implement strategies that more efficiently and sustainably handle waste like expanding recycling and composting services to more Denver residents and increasing automate solid waste services.4 In order to plan for the huge amounts of growth the city expects in the years to come, waste produced in the commercial sector and in multifamily units (8 or more). That part of Denver’s waste stream is not currently tracked by the city and is completely unregulated.

As a city grows, so must its industries and infrastructure.

Commercial and Multifamily Waste — No Specific Strategies in PlaceDenver has the 10th largest central business district5 in the country with 26,000 businesses in the city, which generates a large share of the non-residential waste. While there is no good estimate or reliable tracking of commercial waste in Denver, we know from other major cities such as Los Angeles, that commercial waste dominates the overall waste stream.6 Not knowing how much waste is produced, how much is recycled, or who is hauling it is a huge problem especially given that it is estimated that as many as 100 haulers may operate in Denver.7 This lack of information makes it unpractical for the city to put specific strategies in place that will ensure the appropriate infrastructure investments are being made.

With Denver’s growth, the city needs to be sure that the private sector is ready to efficiently handle the challenges this could present to other city infrastructures. For this reason, DSWM should play a role in ensuring that the private sector is operating in a way that keeps up with the increasing pressure.

Unfortunately, Denver does not currently collect the basic data necessary to design a smart commercial waste system. As a result, DSWM is unable to intervene on key issues like raising our recycling rate, and mitigating trash truck impacts on our roads.

Low Recycling Rate Denver’s 16%* recycling rate is half the national average, and a fifth of what other world-class cities like Los Angeles and San Diego have achieved.8 To be a world-class city and continue to compete with other cities we need to increase our recycling rate at the same time as we watch our city’s population explode and to do this we need to know what our entire system looks like, not just half of it.

Denver provides universal access for single family homes to recycling services including a free 95-gallon recycling cart, yet only 16% of the waste from small multifamily and single-family units gets recycled. Despite Denver’s low recycling rate, participation rate in its residential recycling program is 74.7% of all eligible households.9 The city’s overall recycling rate could be even worse when taking multifamily and commercial waste into account. In addition to implementing programs that will incentivize city waste system users to recycle, DSWM must also learn more about the waste stream it does not manage by collecting data. With this knowledge more innovative policies could be passed that would make it easier for private waste system users to have access to recycling. *16% reflects only single-family homes and multi-family units with 7 or less units

Haulers’ Impact Our Roads

As stated earlier there are as many as 100 private haulers operating in Denver with little

to no regulation. Their heavy trucks operate on local roads and in alleyways impacting

our roads in three key ways:

Congested Roads: When a city is growing as rapidly as Denver is, street capacity can become a real issue for everyday drivers. It is no wonder that TomTom Navigation named Denver No. 22 worst traffic in the U.S. out of 200 cities surveyed worldwide, with the number of people moving here and so many trucks on the road. A new study confirms Denver’s bad traffic, saying that on average there is an 18-minute delay on a 30-minute commute during peak driving times.10

Though modest, requiring haulers to be licensed, will ensure that only the good actors continue to drive our streets and alleyways, reducing the overall number of haulers on the road.

Unsafe Roads:It is no secret that hauling trash is a dirty job but we want to minimize the amount of harm that is done to our neighborhoods. Haulers could be leaking hazardous toxins like leachate, a liquid pollutant from food waste and chemicals, on our local streets and alleyways.11 For this reason, all trucks should be labeled so Denver residents can report this behavior.

To save money some haulers, particularly small haulers, may not have the proper insurance coverage for their vehicles, drivers and laborers.12 The City of Denver should make sure that

there are no private haulers that are deliberately cutting corners to undercut business and no business owners that do not know that they are harming the safety of neighborhoods with leaky and improperly insured trucks.

Damaged Roads: Various research studies have confirmed that heavier trucks, like waste haulers, cause far more damage to streets and alleyways than passenger vehicles. There has been no robust research done on trucks and street damage in Denver but other cities have started to produce good studies. In 2008 our neighbor, Fort Collins, commissioned a study to evaluate the impacts of several garbage trucks on their residential streets and found some interesting but not altogether shocking results. Most street deterioration was associated with use and

street damage increased at a faster rate as size and weight of a vehicle increases. This means that the heavier the vehicle the greater proportion of damage it will do to streets. Along with this some neighborhoods have several trash haulers on their streets a week which increases damage to roads even more.

Garbage trucks are typically the heaviest vehicles regularly operating on local streets and are a major contributor to wear and tear on those streets. Lastly, it is worth noting that the report states that garbage trucks are equivalent to 1,279 passenger cars and that residential recycling trucks are equivalent to 274 cars.13 More data needs to be collected to be able to accurately estimate the damage to our already overflowing city streets and alleyways.

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So What do We Do?

The first step in addressing the growth in waste is a hauler licensing ordinance (HLO).

This ordinance is a policy passed by city council that requires waste haulers to meet

certain requirements that are good for the community as a whole in order to provide their

services in the city. Many cities in the Denver Metro area already have a hauler licensing

process (that address insurance, leaky trucks, CDOT inspections and other issues).14

Denver needs a licensing process to make sure that all the haulers in Denver are operating

responsibly. To help the city address its recycling rate and increased waste because of

population growth haulers will also need to collect and share basic data with the city about how much waste

they’re hauling, where it’s going and how much is being recycled.

To ensure that there is a good system the license should require haulers to follow certain standards:

Safety Standards Reporting Standards

• Suitable insurance coverage • No leaky trucks on city roads

and alleyways• Accurately labeled trucks and

dumpsters • Proof of CDOT inspections • Properly licensed operators

• Tons landfilled, tons recycled, and tons composted

• Percentage of costumers that recycle• Annual reporting

The most important aspect of implementing a hauler license ordinance is the potential it has to help the City of Denver to identify pervasive problems and find innovative solutions. This potential is created through the reporting standards that it sets. The ordinance will not cause sudden changes in our system but it will pave the way for DSWM to have the information needed to better understand commercial waste in order to create a better waste system in Denver.

1 Weissmann, Jordan. “Austin, Texas, Is Blowing Away Every Other Big City in Population Growth.” Slate. N.p., 21 May 2015. Web. 23 Sept. 201Weissmann, Jordan. “Austin, Texas, Is Blowing Away Every Other Big City in Population Growth.” Slate. N.p., 21 May 2015. Web. 23 Sept. 2015. <http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/05/21/population_growth_in_u_s_cities_austin_is_blowing_away_the_competition.html>.5.

2 Penske Truck Rentals ranks Denver as the seventh most popular moving destination based on consumer truck rental reservations. Hendee, Caitlin. “Denver a Top 10 Destination for People Relocating.” Denver Business Journal. N.p., 4 Feb. 2015. Web. 23 Nov. 2015. <http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2015/02/04/denver-a-top-10-destination-for-people-relocating.html>.

3 Boyd, Pam. “Trash Talk: Garbage Data Is an Economic Indicator | VailDaily.com.” The VailDaily. 16 Jan. 2012. Web. 23 Nov. 2015. <http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20120115/NEWS/120119866>.

4 https://www.denvergov.org/content/dam/denvergov/Portals/344/documents/Budget/MayorsProposedBudget_2016.pdf5 http://www.byui.edu/career-services/networking/area-coordinators-missionaries/learn-more-about-denver6 Don’t Waste L.A. A Path to Green Jobs, Clean Air and Recycling for All, page 2.7 The 2009-2010 Denver Metro Yellowbook lists 82 refuse removal companies, as well as several refuse equipment,

container and disposal companies. 8 http://www.wastedive.com/news/mile-high-city-plummets-with-16-recycling-rate/406760/

http://www.cafr.org/resources/ ; http://lacitysan.org/solid_resources/recycling/ http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/09/17/5-cities-are-recycling-superstars

9 https://www.denvergov.org/content/dam/denvergov/Portals/709/documents/DenverRecycles_ExecSummary_2014.pdf10 http://kdvr.com/2015/03/31/study-denver-area-in-top-25-for-worst-traffic-in-u-s/11 Sustainability Principles and Practice By Margaret Robertson page 27012 http://www.junk-king.com/locations/fairfax/2014/03/04/junk-and-debris-haulers-separating-the-good-form-the-not-so-good/13 http://www.fcgov.com/recycling/pdf/Trash_Services_Study_Final_Report_2008.pdf14 Westminster, Lakewood, Pueblo, Larimer County, Golden, Fort Collins, Boulder County, Vail, Loveland

7760 W 38th Ave Wheat Ridge, CO 80033

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FRESC is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. Report author: Quinntavious Williams.