Longmont staff: Curbside collections of compostable items can be rated a 'success'

May 16—Longmont's 4-year-old program of curbside collections of compostable items can be considered a success by at least one measure, according to the city's Public Works and Natural Resources Department staff.

It has achieved, or is approaching, "the goals we set," said Charles Kamenides, the city's waste services manager.

He said in an interview and an email that prior to Longmont's April 2017 launch of its composting collections program, a consultant projected that about 25 percent of the Longmont households eligible for the service would volunteer to pay to participate.

Kamenides said Longmont is "hitting near-25% market penetration with our residences. We are currently at 22% participation, and that continues to slowly increase.

He said that as of last month, 6,590 Longmont of the 29,756 residential solid waste customers eligible to opt into the curbside compostable materials collections from the green-lidded carts provided by the city were signed-up subscribers to the service.

Another goal was for the program to be self-supporting and pay for itself, which Kamenides said has been the case. During the city's 2020 budget year, Longmont's composting program's collections, hauling and disposing expenses totaled $416,291 and revenues were $481,414.

Under Longmont's opt-in program, the city's solid waste collections customers pay $6.60 a month for curbside collections residents have put into the compost bins — collections that city crews make every other week.

Last year, "we picked up almost 125 tons of compostable materials" from those homes' bins, Kamenides said.

Longmont trucks the compostable materials to Western Disposal Services' center at 5880 Butte Mill Road, Boulder, and pays Western $86 a ton to take the materials for further processing, Kamenides said.

He said Western and its solid waste-industry counterparts then transport the materials to A-1 Organics, a large facility in Keenesburg that says on its website that it provides "home gardens, commercial landscapers, agriculturalists, municipalities, and institutions with organic soils, multi-purpose composts, mulches, and organics recycling services."

Kamenides said the city will continue its efforts to promote the environmental and solid-waste-reduction merits of its compostable materials curbside collections service, something he said it has been doing even before City Council authorized its startup more than four years ago.

"The city has used numerous programs since 2017 to promote composting beginning with the 'LOCO for Composting' campaign to launch the program and the 'Savvy Sam' campaign to increase participation," Kamenides said.

Additionally, the program is advertised to new customers when they initially sign up for city water, sewer and electric utilities services as well as trash and garbage collections.

However, "it should be noted that it is unlikely that participation will change much more under the current scenario of opt-in and with the current cost-recovery-only pricing," he said.

Further marketing of composting will borrow from the previous campaigns and will be used primarily to maintain current levels of participation, Kamenides said.

Under the current program, all single-family homes are eligible to subscribe for the curbside composting service. Not now eligible are larger multi-family residential developments such as apartment complexes, because "we don't have the equipment to provide that service" at present, he said.

Under the service, Longmont collects such items as compostable lawn and garden waste, soiled paper products and food scraps from the carts at each signed-up residence.

Kamenides said Longmont's staff is not currently planning to suggest to the City Council, this year at least, any changes in the curbside compostable materials collections program or any changes in the monthly fee being charged to people who sign up for it.

In a written report for a December 2020 City Council review of Longmont's solid waste services, staff wrote "much of the solid waste generated in Longmont today and dumped to landfills can be reused via recycling and composting. Reuse of discarded solid waste materials can greatly reduce the environmental impacts of mining and harvesting natural resources, and the production of virgin plastics. Composting can also reduce environmental impacts such as the emission of greenhouse gases, i.e., methane, and unnecessary use of landfill space."

Council members voted unanimously at that Dec.1 meeting to approve Councilman Aren Rodriguez's motion to direct staff "to bring back actionable items" on possible changes to the city's solid waste services "in appropriate pieces, and a list that includes the lowest hanging fruit to the hardest to implement with costs so council can go through the list and make informed decisions."

Kamenides, who's a member of the Boulder County Resource Conservation Advisory Board, said this past week that all the communities in the county "are looking at ways to reduce their solid waste and improve recycling."

Abby Driscoll, chair of Sustainable Resilient Longmont, a local environmental advocacy organization, said in an interview that SRL "supports the curbside composting program and looking for ways to expand it, getting more people to sign up."

Driscoll said that's part of an overall goal of increasing the amount of materials diverted from being deposited in landfills.

Dan Matsch, director of Eco-Cycle's Compost Department, said in an interview that "we would be remiss in looking at climate change without looking at doing our best with the best tools we have," including composting.

He said, "There are many possible uses of compost for agriculture in Colorado if there's some kind of incentive for farmers to do that."

Matsch said in an email that then when it comes to waste reduction efforts to reduce the amounts of materials sent to landfills, all Boulder County's cities "have implemented some form of residential 'pay-as-you-throw,'" a system in which customers' collections bills rely at least in part on how much solid waste they generate, or how many carts they're filing and the sizes of those carts.

"Next steps are outreach and education to businesses and multi-family complexes, working with haulers to increase access, and building local composting infrastructure to make composting as cost-competitive with landfilling as possible," Matsch, who's also co-chair of the Colorado Composting Council.

"Public understanding of the opportunity of carbon farming to draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is also very important to encourage people to reduce contamination that's difficult to remove from finished compost," Matsch said.

Longmont City Council members, after getting a Dec. 1 city staff presentation on all the city's solid waste services, did not specifically direct staff to pursue any changes in those services, including the compost collections.

Instead, Council members indicated they'd prefer staff to bring back "low-hanging fruit," potential changes in sold waste services that could be done the soonest and least expensively, when any such staff recommendations are ready for council consideration.

The staff's memo to the council for that December discussion of solid waste services did list a number of suggestions staff said it had received from members of the public, including: creation of more options for different size compost containers; charging all customers the $6.60 monthly composting fee in all utility customers' bills, and not just those who opt into the composing program, including residents of up to eight multi-family units in a building in the program, and supporting development of a Boulder County compost facility or transfer stations.

Regional facility

While it's not part of Longmont's policies or plans at this point, Boulder County officials are continuing to consider the possibility of locating a regional composting facility within the county.

Boulder County commissioners decided on March 4 to withdraw a controversial special land use application for the development of such a facility on county-owned open space at 5762 N. 107th St. (U.S. 287), south of Longmont and northwest of Erie. Commissioners subsequently announced that that property, the former Rainbow Nursery tree farm, would not be the location of such composting facility even if the county eventually creates one.

Michelle Krezek, the commissioners' staff deputy, said in a recent interview that the commissioners have directed county staff "to continue working on potential options" for a composting facility, options she said could include a smaller-scale composting center than what had been proposed for North 107th Street.

"It's going to be kind of looking at everything we could use to get to that zero-waste goal" the county set for itself several years ago, Krezek said. "We sill have a goal to divert almost all of our waste" from landfills.

Bob Allen, Longmont's Public Works and Natural Resources operations director, said city officials have been told there's about 50 years of life left in the privately owned Front Range Landfill near Erie, where Longmont takes its non-compostable and non-recyclable trash.

"None of that has started yet," Krezek said of the new options study, and there is no timeline yet making recommendations about how and whether to proceed.

Krezek said Boulder County's study will include seeking community involvement and comments and "getting expertise on what would be the best practices."

Boulder County Public Works Director Jeffery Maxwell said in an email: "Boulder County remains committed to exploring all potential waste diversion options. We are currently working to create a Zero Waste Infrastructure Project Manager position to lead this effort and fully engage the community in the decision making process.

"According to the 2019 Waste Composition Study led by our Resource Conservation Division, there are an estimated 48,000 tons of compostable materials landfilled in the county annually. Our goal is to determine the best option to divert this material and create an economically-sustainable composting solution," Maxwell said.

A county website giving the history of the facility proposal states that a county compost processing facility "is a top priority for Zero Waste infrastructure need and will support the Board of County Commissioners' Climate Action strategic priority, the Zero Waste Action Plan, the Environmental Sustainability Plan, and components of the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan."

Creation and implementation of a compost facility would "help achieve our goal of 'Zero Waste or Darn Near by 2025' by capturing 20 to 30% of compostable county waste and increasing landfill diversion by five to 10%," according to that website. "The compost generated will be provided for area agricultural uses, which will help increase local, sustainable food production. Residents too will be able to drop-off compostable material and pick-up finished compost at the facility to use on their own lawns and gardens."

Further information

— Information about Longmont's compostable materials collections can be viewed at tinyurl.com/fyt4xpsf

— Answers to frequently asked questions Longmont gets about its composting, recycling, trash and other solid waste services can be found at tinyurl.com/3evfws3y

— Information about Boulder County's previous proposal for building a regional county composting facility, along with links to county information about composting and recycling, can be viewed at tinyurl.com/9y4ss8c8