Zero Waste Community Infrastructure

Eco-Cycle's vision for a Zero Waste community involves investing in infrastructure that recovers resources, rather than destroying them. We are in the planning process for two new centers, the Eco-Cycle Zero Waste Center and a new Center for Hard-to-Recycle Materials. For more information on either facility, contact Eco-Cycle at 303.444.6634.

Eco-Cycle Zero Waste Center

In the U.S., for every trash can you see at the curb or in the alleyway, there are 71 trash-can equivalents of waste generated to produce the products and packaging we consume every day. In total, 11 billion tons of waste are created in the United States each year, with the bulk coming from mining, manufacturing, energy exploration/production, agricultural, and other “production” activities that occur before the product even reaches the consumer. This waste represents natural resources—trees, water, energy, soil, oil, fossil fuels, and rock—as well as disrupted ecosystems and lost habitat for untold numbers of species. As the world’s population and rates of consumption continue to rise, so does our global impact on these limited natural resources and the rural populations that have depended on them for centuries.

After nearly a century of investing public dollars in landfills to deal with our growing trash volume, we have come to a better understanding. We now know that investing in landfills perpetuates a system of pollution, the permanent loss of resources, both physical and financial, and a “throw away culture” that has become a major global problem. The average modern landfill now costs $1 million per acre to build, and may be 100 acres or more in size. As materials flow into these “trash mountains,” large amounts of toxic gases are released including methane, a greenhouse gas 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The EPA has stated that landfills are now the #1 source of human-made methane in the world. We have also learned that landfills are a serious threat to groundwater quality as toxic leachate (landfill juice) can leak from landfills. The EPA has acknowledged that even the most modern landfills will eventually leak, and, since 50% of Americans depend upon groundwater for their drinking water, this is a serious public health issue.

Our Innovative Approach: The Eco-Cycle Zero Waste Center

Eco-Cycle is proposing to build the 21st century alternative to landfills and incinerators as the primary technologies for treating society’s “waste.” Our approach, called the Zero Waste System, addresses the challenge by first stating that there is no waste problem, only a wasted opportunity. Our system will focus on recovering the 90% of the discard stream that actually has market value as a feedstock material for industry. The current global markets for recycled metal, plastic and paper have never been better, and across the world new “resource recovery systems” are emerging to capture that financial value.

Eco-Cycle’s primary goal is to begin the planning and construction of a Zero Waste Center, a complete recovery facility for discards from businesses and residents. The facility would handle the vast majority of the discarded materials generated in our community—traditional recyclables, compostable organic material, and hard-to-recycle materials like electronics, Styrofoam and pallets. Our goal is to push the boundaries of innovation until we have successfully removed trash cans from a significant number of local businesses and homes.

The Eco-Cycle Zero Waste Center is a social enterprise project that strives to protect public health and the environment, conserve natural resources, respect indigenous populations across the planet, create local jobs, and be financially self-supporting. Once demonstrated in the Boulder Valley, the goal is to disseminate the approach to other communities, so that they, too, could design and build a sustainable resource management system. Rather than the $100 million to build a new landfill, we estimate the development costs for Phase One of our new facility to be approximately $4.5 million, including land costs. This project would serve the needs of all 300,000 people in Boulder County for at least the next five years, at which time a second phase to complete construction would be planned. The completion of phase two would enable a massive shift away from landfilling for residents and businesses of Boulder County.

Our community has been a leader in resource conservation for 30 years. The investment in the Zero Waste Center ensures we continue to push the boundaries of resource management until we reach a sustainable future.