Colorado owns one of the worst recycling rates in the United States, but state leaders and environmentalists hope a new program to expand free recycling services across the state will improve that poor ranking.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Hazardous Materials and Waste Management Division this week approved a program that will create free statewide recycling, shifting the cost to companies that produce packaging and away from residents and local governments. It’s called the Producer Responsibility Program and is expected to begin its rollout in 2026.
The program will add recycling to an estimated 700,000 residences across Colorado, said Wolf Kray, who oversees recycling programs at the Department of Public Health and Environment. And it should eliminate recycling costs for those who already pay for curbside recycling in their cities.
“This will be a free recycling service statewide,” Kray said.
It will take several years to fully roll out the program across Colorado as cities and towns, along with trash haulers such as Waste Management, Republic Services and other companies, figure out the logistics.
“This isn’t a switch,” Kray said. “It’s more of a dial.”
The program will be run by Circular Action Alliance, a nonprofit managed by 20 companies from the food and beverage, consumer goods and retail sectors that create and use packaging. The list of companies includes Amazon, Colgate-Palmolive, Mars Incorporated, the Coca-Cola Company and Walmart, according to the Circular Action Alliance’s website.
The alliance will decide how much companies should be charged for the waste they produce in Colorado through cardboard boxes, aluminum cans, plastic bottles and other containers, and then those fees will be used to reimburse companies that haul recyclable material from people’s homes to recycling facilities.
The recycling program does not erase the fees people pay to dispose of other household garbage.
Environmentalists applauded the new program, which they believe will divert millions of tons of waste from Colorado’s landfills each year and save consumers and local governments money.
“The purpose of this is to transform our current system where all residents have had to pay to get recycling service in order to do the right thing,” said Suzanne Jones, executive director of Eco-Cycle, a Boulder nonprofit that promotes recycling and runs a recycling center. “Right now, Colorado has a pretty lousy recycling and composting rate. So let’s provide recycling service to everyone in the state that is as convenient as their trash service.”
Studies have shown that Coloradans diverted about 16% of their waste from landfills over the last six years through recycling or composting, which is half the national average.
Diverting waste, especially paper products, will reduce the amount of harmful gases such as methane and carbon dioxide that are released from landfills. Those gases contribute to global warming and harm human health. Fewer greenhouse gases oozing into the atmosphere also would help the Front Range address its ground-level ozone problem.
Once the recycling program is fully running, it’s projected to keep 400,000 tons of waste out of the state’s landfills annually by 2035, Kray said. And that should reduce landfill emissions by 1.3 million metric tons each year — the equivalent of taking 280,000 cars off the road.
The Circular Action Alliance will be responsible for public education about proper recycling, so people are aware of how to separate their household waste. There will be a single list of acceptable items for recycling statewide to eliminate confusion about which plastics and other materials go in the bins, Kray said.
Every city has its own method of providing trash service.
In Denver, residents pay for trash pickup but not recycling or compost because the city wants to promote those services. The city of Aurora does not provide trash pickup as a city service, so residents choose from a handful of companies to pick up their garbage and decide whether or not they want to pay for recycling.
In Arvada, the city uses Republic Services to provide citywide trash and recycling pickup that homeowners pay for, but the city also allows residents to hire their own service for a small fee.
Cyndi Karvaski, a spokeswoman for the Denver Department of Transportation and Infrastructure, said it’s too early in the process to say how the new program will play out for the city’s residents. But the department looks forward to working with the state and the Circular Action Alliance.
All the different systems for waste disposal make it hard to sort out just how much Colorado homeowners ultimately will save on their garbage bills.
“The residents should see that savings in their bill,” Eco-Cycle’s Jones said. “We will be looking to make sure that happens.”
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