Broomfield City Council on Tuesday will vote to rename the environmental task force, which has been meeting since 2018, and on moving forward with a new zero-waste plan.
The plan, which is slated to be complete this month, would make waste diversion a priority and have Broomfield, as a whole, be 50% waste-free by 2025 and achieve zero-waste status by 2035. If the plan is approved, the Environmental Stewardship Advisory Task Force — which Council on Tuesday will consider renaming the Advisory Committee on Environmental Stewardship — will draft an action plan. Zero waste means striving for a 90% waste diversion from the landfill, either by recycling, reusing or composting, said Darla Arians, chair of the task force.
The biggest takeaway from discussion at last week’s Council meeting, was unanimous support to keep sustainability issues a priority in Broomfield, particularly waste reduction, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and exploring solar options.
Task force members last week also introduced preliminary results from waste audit, which showed that 61% of Broomfield’s waste is organic; 16% is recyclable; 4% is hard to recycle, 3% is construction and demolition materials, and 1% is hazardous.
The audit was conducted at the landfill, transfer stations and recycling center used by Broomfield.
“We know they are Broomfield loads, because we coordinated with the haulers and the final destinations to identify Broomfield-specific routes, and to identify which day of the week the material is collected and where it would be delivered to, and arranged our audits based on that information,” Arians said. “This information is useful because it informs us on where we need to focus our education (efforts). What are people throwing away that could be recycled or composted, or what are people trying to recycle that is causing contamination?”
Full audit results are expected to be published by the second quarter of this year and will include data from multi-family units and open space and parks properties. So far a professor and graduate students at the University of Colorado Denver, who are conducting the analysis, have inventoried single family and commercial waste streams.
The audit looks at trash, recycling, compost/organics and construction and demolition materials.
Council in the fall passed an ordinance requiring haulers to report trash data. The first full year of data will be available in January 2021, and will include quantities of trash and recycling from residential and commercial properties; the number of customers haulers have for each service and sector; and the final destination of material.
Retrack, the reporting software Broomfield makes available to hauling companies on its website, also has the ability to calculate greenhouse gas impacts from disposal of materials, Arians said.
Ward 1 Councilwoman Elizabeth Law-Evans, who served on the first sustainability committee years ago, said one thing discussed then was the “triple bottom line concept.”
The analysis presented last Tuesday is detailed from an environmental and education perspective, Law-Evans said, adding she can’t adequately evaluate recommendations without cost estimates and analysis.
On Thursday, Arians said conducting a cost-benefit analysis and considering return on investment is common practice, and the committee will take them into consideration when making recommendations.
Council members also stressed the importance of educating residents and businesses on how they can reduce waste and greenhouse gas emissions.
Suggestions brought up at Tuesday’s meeting included adding more electric vehicle charging stations (public and private), solar gardens or carports and implementing curbside recycling and composting. Others included reducing water use in places such as road medians and rights-of-way.
The task force is divided into three sub-committees — energy, zero waste and transportation — all of which meet once a month. Members’ backgrounds range from an analyst specializing in greenhouse gas inventories to an alternative energy expert to a water engineer and Arians, who is a division manager of the Boulder Resource Conservation Advisory Board. A high school student and college student also serve on the task force.
Aaron Huen, vice chair and member of the energy subgroup, said the primary goal is to reduce Broomfield’s carbon footprint, which can be accomplished in three ways — reducing total amount of energy used, reducing peak demand and by moving to lower carbon fuel sources.
At last week’s meeting, the concept of one trash company handling all Broomfield waste was brought up by several Council members, but it is not a recommendation from the committee at this time, Arians said. Members will research the pros and cons of that approach, she said.
Dozens of local municipalities have adopted zero-waste goals or sustainability strategies, Arians said. Fort Collins has a zero-waste goal by 2020; Boulder County and the University of Colorado Boulder by 2025, she said, and the state has a goal of 51% waste reduction by 2036.
Ward 2 Councilman Stan Jezierski, like all of council, thanked the committee for its work.
He said he has been excited since the task force was first created, and fully supports it becoming a permanent committee. Jezierski also said he is interested in learning more about Broomfield moving to a single trash hauler and research on single-use plastics, including what kind of consequences could come of eliminating them.
Ward 4 Councilwoman Kimberly Groom likewise expressed excitement about the plans the task force is putting together and said she feels it is moving in the right direction. She said she supports electric vehicle charging, but wanted the group to consider its impact on the electric grid if widely used during peak times.
She also suggested the group look into biochar — a charcoal-like substance made by burning organic material from agricultural and forestry waste— as a lawn treatment as an alternative to xeriscaping. She also said educating the public on the most water-efficient way to care for their lawns and gardens could be a way to address water usage.
Groom also expressed concern about requiring trash haulers to provide curbside compost and recycling services and questioned whether small businesses would need to buy trucks or equipment to meet that demand.
At last week’s meeting, Arians said most small companies have been bought out by large trash haulers, and most communities along the Front Range offer curbside recycling and composing, so most companies have those types of vehicles in their fleet. It could make companies’ operations easier because Broomfield would be more consistent with the regional approach, she said.
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Broomfield zero-waste plan up for City Council vote Tuesday - Broomfield Enterprise
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