{"id":41354,"date":"2025-07-05T18:05:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-05T18:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/41354\/"},"modified":"2025-07-05T18:05:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-05T18:05:11","slug":"denver-would-rather-teach-than-fine-recycling-scofflaws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/41354\/","title":{"rendered":"Denver would rather teach than fine recycling scofflaws"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sean Brown has lived in cities where the trash and recycling police had extremely itchy pen fingers when it came to writing violations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Couple of paper bakery bags mixed in with the vegetable peel compost? Useless loose plastic wrap tossed into the recyclables with the valuable aluminum cans?\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019ll be 100 bucks, and don\u2019t bother complaining at City Hall.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were very quick to say, \u2018Hey, absolutely not. You cannot do this.\u2019 We are a little bit slower,\u201d said Brown, manager of the diversion and education program for Denver\u2019s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not fining anyone right now, and we have basically multiple touch points built into this whole process,\u201d Brown said, describing how Denver is handling public education and correction after a massive expansion of composting and the switch to pay-as-you-go trash cart sizes. Unless what you\u2019re doing is an immediate safety hazard to drivers and sorters, Brown said, \u201cYou\u2019ll get upwards of 20 to 25 opportunities and notices before anything happens.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The most common recycling and composting contamination by consumers is rarely intentional, Brown likes to say. His own Chicago mistake is something he sees in Denver all the time \u2014 consumers putting their mixed recyclables inside a plastic bag and tying the top, before they toss it in the purple recycling bin. That\u2019s a no-no \u2014 most flimsy plastic film, like garbage bags are not recyclable, and if they don\u2019t get blown by air puffs out of the sorting lines, they can tie up the machinery.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Composting mistakes are usually just catching up with new directives from compost handlers in the last couple of years. That means no paper napkins, cardboard, paper plates or greasy pizza boxes thrown in with the potato peels on the assumption it will all \u201cbreak down.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

If a series of warning notes from the haulers doesn\u2019t change behavior, carts can be confiscated, Brown said. The city will return them once they\u2019ve heard a convincing argument that the consumer is ready to get it right, he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"City and County of Denver trash, compost, and recycle bins line the alley between W 36th and W37th Avenues in the West Highland neighborhood on July 3, 2025 in Denver. (Kathryn Scott, Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/p>\n

Denver officials say they are still in the education and encouragement phase of their waste stream overhaul of the past few years. The city switched from free trash and recycling pickup, and $9 a month for a compost cart, to a new pay-as-you-throw model. The trash cart now costs up to $21 a month based on size, while the recycling cart is free, and the green compost carts are free but must be requested.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the spring, Denver decided to speed up its neighborhood-by-neighborhood rollout of the compost offering, and now has that service available all across the city. During the latest push, 30,000 to 40,000 households signed up, bringing all composting to about 70,000 carts citywide, Brown said. The city serves about 180,000 households overall, while apartment buildings and commercial businesses must contract with private services.<\/p>\n

Improving on Colorado\u2019s overall waste-diversion rates of about 15% requires changes up and down the toss-collect-sort system. One of the reasons Denver moved away from its alley-dumpster trash system years ago was contamination, Brown said. Neighbors or rogue dumpers would put anything and everything into the enormous, opaque containers, spoiling chances to divert and reuse and endangering haulers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Once composting expanded, other forms of contamination were an issue. The composting company Denver used initially was taking paper products in the compost carts, but eventually called a timeout, saying loads were too full of paper plates and broken glass and other contaminants that made for poor compost and broken machines. (Once it\u2019s culled for contaminants, the organic composed materials are set out in large windrows under the hot sun to bake out the bad microbes and employ the good microbes to create a soil base.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Denver\u2019s current recycling and composting sorter, Waste Management, wants the green bins limited to obvious organic materials like garden trimmings, vegetable and fruit peels and loose household food leftovers. Even film materials marked as \u201ccompostable\u201d bags must be part of an approved manufacturing list sanctioned by state law.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Helping neighborhoods keep up with these changing rules requires a big initial education push, Brown and other recycling advocates say. Denver\u2019s city haulers carry around preprinted pads of recycling do\u2019s and don\u2019ts in cartoonish pictures, which they can circle or cross out, and add notations to leave on individual carts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an all-hands-on-deck attempt to slowly change the culture and the habits of Denverites regarding their recycling and compost carts,\u201d Brown said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Denver officials and their sorting company are pleased with the compliance so far, with contamination rates of just over 1% for the green compost carts based on spot sampling, Brown said. Denver\u2019s contract with the sorter puts a contamination cap of 10% on processed materials.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"A City and County of Denver recycling truck makes its way down the alleys of the West Highland neighborhood, completing pickups that occur every two weeks on July 3, 2025 in Denver. (Kathryn Scott, Special to The Colorado Sun)<\/p>\n

Denver\u2019s codes allow for fines to the homeowner, but Brown is so studiously avoiding that method for now that he\u2019s not even clear on how much they could ticket for. Current enforcement and education includes teams of employees walking alleys, checking for contamination levels and leaving notes; haulers watching what falls from the carts into their hoppers; and Brown and others getting on the phone with frequent violators telling them they\u2019re in danger of losing their carts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cImagine that you sped down your local neighborhood road every day, you\u2019re going 40 in a 20, and there\u2019s been no cops catching you there a couple years,\u201d Brown said. \u201cSo all of a sudden there\u2019s a cop there, and he\u2019s radar-ing people. You might slow down, a quick brake, try and get out of that situation. And you might go back to 40 in a 20 if he\u2019s not there the next day. But if that cop is there every day or every week monitoring you, all of a sudden, your driving action is corrected. You\u2019re going the speed limit, you\u2019re not wanting to get pulled over.\u201d<\/p>\n

The city\u2019s most common problem now is yanking three to five compost carts a week for repeated violations and no response to the education effort.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we see in the report is that the compost cart is completely full of trash,\u201d Brown said. \u201cThey never intended it to be a compost cart. They just wanted a second trash cart.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Type of Story: News<\/p>\n

Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sean Brown has lived in cities where the trash and recycling police had extremely itchy pen fingers when…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":41355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[32648,32649,746,12578,159,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-41354","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-city-and-county-of-denver","9":"tag-composting","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-recycling","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114801955564893781","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}