Community-Based Zero Waste Change
Eco-Cycle is dedicated to building Zero Waste communities across Colorado and beyond. While each community may start in a different place with regard to waste reduction, recycling, and composting, there are basic rungs in the Zero Waste ladder they can climb to help Colorado reach its waste diversion goals. Eco-Cycle uses best practices from around the world to work with communities and help them advance up the ladder.
Recent Community Campaign Victories
Brighton’s Hauler Licensing Ordinance
Until 2026, few Brighton residents had recycling as part of their trash service, and there were no places to drop off items like bottles, cans, and cardboard to be recycled. Brighton residents spoke up for expanding access to recycling.
The City worked with Eco-Cycle and Resource Recycling Systems (RRS) through two projects funded by the Colorado Circular Communities Enterprise (C3) Strategic Technical Expertise for the Public Sector (STEPS) program. In the first project, Eco-Cycle recommended several policy options to help Brighton increase recycling. After the City explored and decided not to pursue a single-hauler contract, Council directed staff to create a hauler licensing ordinance. In the second project, Eco-Cycle helped develop and pass a hauler licensing ordinance. The Brighton City Council unanimously approved the ordinance, requiring trash, recycling, and compost haulers to obtain a license to operate in the city starting January 1, 2027.
This ordinance positions Brighton’s residents to benefit from the state’s Producer Responsibility program. This program, passed in 2022, requires companies that sell packaged products in Colorado to fund a recycling system for their packaging. The program will cover the costs of recycling for residents in places where haulers or municipalities participate. Haulers operating in Colorado can contract with Circular Action Alliance, the state’s Producer Responsibility Organization, to be reimbursed for the costs of providing recycling services. The state law does not require haulers to participate in the Producer Responsibility program. Brighton’s ordinance, which requires haulers to provide free recycling, ensures all Brighton residents will receive free recycling services when the costs are covered by Producer Responsibility. This makes Brighton the first city with an open market waste collection system to require free recycling in Colorado, and creates a model for other cities to follow.
Broomfield’s Single-Hauler Contract with Pay-As-You-Throw
In the spring of 2025, the City and County of Broomfield rolled out a new residential waste services program. This program makes it easier for residents to recycle and will help keep costs low for trash and recycling. The new program set up a hauler contract with a single hauling company to provide trash and recycling services to Broomfield residents. The new contract included “Pay-As-You-Throw” pricing, a system that incentivizes recycling and can save people money. Pay-As-You-Throw sets rates for trash and recycling collection based on the size of the trash cart and bundles in the cost of recycling. The smaller the trash cart, the lower the cost—so the more you recycle and the less you send to the landfill, the more money you save. Broomfield made this change to increase residential access to recycling and to reduce the amount of trash going to the landfill.
Through C3’s STEPS program, Eco-Cycle developed a communications and engagement campaign to ensure a successful rollout of the new program. The campaign informed residents about the changes and helped them transition to the new residential waste services program. This included outreach events, educational messaging, and communication materials tailored to address community needs and concerns. Eco-Cycle created social media posts, postcards, posters, flyers, factsheets, handouts, and videos and hosted two open houses and two educational sessions about recycling for residents. Broomfield successfully enrolled 87% of eligible households in its program, increasing the number of residents with curbside recycling services.
Lafayette’s Universal Recycling Ordinance
In 2024, Eco-Cycle, as part of C3’s STEPS program, conducted a robust engagement process with owners and property managers in the business community and at multifamily apartment complexes. The project developed and passed a Universal Recycling Ordinance (URO) for the city to make recycling universal across the community. Eco-Cycle combined best practices from research of local and national UROs with feedback gathered from the engagement process to inform the final URO. Council adopted the URO in June 2024. It went into effect in January 2025 and requires all businesses, apartments, and City-permitted events to provide recycling collection services.
Longmont’s Universal Recycling Ordinance
Similar to Lafayette’s URO, Longmont also has a Universal Recycling Ordinance (URO) that was passed in 2023. Longmont’s URO phased in recycling requirements over time for the commercial sector, including both multifamily housing complexes and businesses. In addition to requiring recycling services, Longmont’s URO also requires businesses to have composting services. As a result of Longmont’s URO, the city’s commercial waste diversion rate increased from 35% to 59% in the first year of implementation. Eco-Cycle’s Eco-Leader Volunteer Network and staff helped pass the ordinance by meeting with city council members and turning out in support at the council meeting.
Fort Collins Disposable Bag Ordinance
In 2021, with the help of Eco-Cycle, voters in the City of Fort Collins passed a ban on plastic bags and a fee on paper bags in grocery and large retail stores, making Fort Collins the 17th community in Colorado to regulate single-use carry-out bags.
Plastic pollution such as plastic bags are a widespread problem across the country, and the City of Fort Collins wanted to reduce the number of plastic bags showing up in its open spaces and the Cache la Poudre River and watershed. Eco-Cycle provided consulting to the City on the best practices in designing plastic bag ordinances and, in February 2021, the City Council passed an ordinance to ban single-use bags that was contingent on approval by the voters during the April municipal elections. Eco-Cycle worked with the local chapters of the Sierra Club and the Climate Reality Project to put together a grassroots campaign to educate voters on the importance of approving the ordinance, including hosting virtual meetings with community groups, developing fact sheets, and distributing materials to voters’ doors. The ordinance was passed by 59% of voters, which means that as of May 1, 2022, large grocers are prohibited from distributing plastic single-use carry-out bags and now charge $0.12 for disposable paper bags to encourage the use of reusable bags. The fee does not apply to people who use food assistance programs and the city plans to distribute free reusable bags to residents.
Louisville Disposable Bag Tax
In November 2020, after a groundbreaking campaign led by students, voters in the City of Louisville approved a measure to charge a $0.25 tax on both plastic and paper disposable bags at all retail stores, effective January 1, 2022.
According to the City of Louisville, the city uses 4.5 million bags totaling 25 tons per year. Mayor Ashley Stolzmann and members of the city council voted to place a measure on the 2020 ballot establishing a tax on disposable bags as an opportunity for the community to reduce its plastic waste. In response, a small group of students from second graders up to college students organized to support the measure, with Eco-Cycle advising them on ways to raise awareness about the importance of addressing plastic waste. Because of the COVID pandemic, the students had to be creative in their campaign approach, which included videos, sidewalk chalk art, handmade yard signs, and a student-led virtual town hall.
Their hard work paid off on November 3, 2020, when Ballot Measure 2A—the single-use checkout bag tax—passed with 62% of the vote in Louisville. As a result, effective January 1, 2022, the city now charges a $0.25 tax on all disposable bags—both plastic and paper—at all retail stores, making Louisville the 16th community in Colorado to pass a bag ordinance. While other waste-related policy initiatives in Colorado may have involved students, this is the first one that has been led, organized, and implemented almost entirely by students. Their volunteer efforts brought attention to an important issue and their perseverance led to the successful passage of the bag tax measure.
Arvada Organized Waste Hauling
In June 2020, Arvada contracted with one hauler to provide both recycling and trash services to 32,000 single-family homes, the largest city-wide hauling contract in Colorado, which will provide recycling at no additional cost to every single-family home in Arvada.
One of the biggest recycling challenges in Colorado is the lack of a unified or organized local waste collection and management system. For instance, the City of Arvada, the seventh-largest city in Colorado, with a population of over 121,000, formerly had seven haulers providing trash and recycling services to residents, which meant that many collection trucks could be going up and down one street every week. This inefficiency in providing waste collection services increased the cost of recycling to Arvada residents, only 40% of whom had curbside recycling services, resulting in the city recycling only 13% of its waste—one of the lowest recycling rates in the Front Range.
Eco-Cycle provided consultation services to help the City develop a proposal to transition to an organized waste hauling system that was adopted by City Council in June 2020. Eco-Cycle was also heavily involved in educating the public and engaging residents to support the new measure. The newly adopted system contracts with a single hauler, Republic Services, to provide trash and recycling services to single-family homes using volume-based pricing for trash (in which service rates depend on the size of the trash cart) with recycling bundled into the total service cost. The new program began July 1, 2021, making the City of Arvada the largest city in Colorado to contract a single hauler for waste and recycling. As a result, Arvada’s recycling rate is expected to increase dramatically.
Boulder Universal Zero Waste Ordinance
In 2015, the City of Boulder became one of only three cities nationwide to adopt a Universal Zero Waste Ordinance requiring all residents, businesses, and multifamily complexes to have both recycling and composting services.
Despite its sustainability ambitions, back in 2015, the City of Boulder’s waste diversion rate was stalled at a mediocre 32%, well below its goals. While Boulder residents were recycling and composting 48% of their waste, businesses were only recycling and composting 28%, despite years of the City providing incentives to encourage businesses to improve their waste diversion. Consequently, Eco-Cycle advocated to City Council that it was time to level the playing field and require all businesses and multifamily complexes to recycle and compost. Eco-Cycle’s network of 1,000-plus volunteer Eco-Leaders organized a groundswell of grassroots support, including letters to the editor, emails to council, and testimony at council meetings. In response, in June 2015, the Boulder City Council adopted a Universal Zero Waste Ordinance requiring all residents, businesses, and multifamily properties to have both recycling and composting services, becoming the third city in the nation to do so. Thanks to Eco-Cycle’s community education and advocacy, there was no public opposition to the ordinance.
Boulder’s Universal Zero Waste Ordinance has been in effect since 2016, resulting in an increase in the community-wide recycling and composting rate to 53% and catapulting the city back into the role of a leading Zero Waste community.
Boulder Disposable Bag Fee
In November 2012, City Council adopted a Disposable Bag Fee Ordinance requiring a 10-cent fee for disposable plastic and paper checkout bags at all grocery stores in Boulder. The bag fee does not apply to restaurants, bulk or produce bags, newspaper bags, or any other kind of food packaging bags. At the time of adoption, Boulder used approximately 33 million checkout bags a year, or about 342 bags per person each year
Boulder saw a 70% decrease in plastic bag use immediately following the implementation of the bag fee, however, that trend leveled off quickly. As of early 2018, the fee had collected approximately $1,000,000 since it went into effect in 2013.
