2012
CU-Boulder: A National Zero Waste Leader
It takes a village to build a Zero Waste community, and it helps a lot when the largest institution in that community is its own progressive, mini Zero Waste village and a national leader in sustainability. We’re talking about the University of Colorado at Boulder campus.
CU-Boulder is a model of sustainability for college campuses in several respects:
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CU’s Folsom Field is the first football stadium in the nation to require that vendors in the stadium offer only reusable, recyclable and compostable materials. As a result, they’re recovering an average of 80% of materials.
- The campus has its own recycling processing facility, which employs an average of 50 students each semester and processes up to 10,000 pounds of recyclables each day.
- CU is working with the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education to create unified Zero Waste standards and principles for campus communities throughout the country.
- The campus will soon launch a pilot program to replace on-the-go disposables with reusables in the dining halls. Instead of single-use food containers, students will use eco2go reusable food containers that they return to the cafeteria.
- The university’s new Sustainable Practices Program offers individual classes and a Professional Certificate for people interested in sustainability training.
Learn more about CU’s many environmental efforts and how to participate.
© 2012 Eco-Cycle, Inc. All Rights Reserved. No content published by Eco-Cycle may be copied or printed for any use without the expressed written consent of Eco-Cycle. Want to reprint or redistribute our content? Please contact us.
Zero Waste Community Events Demonstrate 90% Recovery of Discards CAN Happen
Zero Waste Events are like mini Zero Waste communities: Event planners (like legislators on the macro level) set rules that require all vendors (businesses) to sell only reusable, recyclable or compostable materials. The infrastructure for “waste” (trash cans and landfills) is replaced with Zero Waste Stations for recycling and compost (resource recovery parks on the large scale), and the cooperative efforts of the whole event (community) result in recovering 90% or more of the discards.
Zero Waste Events Update:
Eco-Cycle has been providing Zero Waste Event services for 16 years, but our 2011 Zero Waste Event season was the busiestand most successful yet. An average of 90% of all event discards were diverted from the landfill, and more than 23,000 lbs. of waste were composted and recycled. We’re hoping to break the record this next event season!
Among the 40 mid-to-large-scale events we serviced this year were the Lafayette Peach Festival, the Boulder Asian Festival, the Boulder Jewish Festival, Longmont’s Venus de Miles, and the first ongoing Zero Waste Event in the country, the Boulder Farmers’ Market!
We want to give a big THANK YOU to all the dedicated event planners, vendors and volunteers who helped make our community festivals and events fun and sustainable.
Learn how to make your party or event waste-free with Eco-Cycle.
© 2012 Eco-Cycle, Inc. All Rights Reserved. No content published by Eco-Cycle may be copied or printed for any use without the expressed written consent of Eco-Cycle. Want to reprint or redistribute our content? Please contact us.
What does a sustainable, Zero Waste City need?
Community Participation in every sector
In a Zero Waste City, everyone participates, not just a handful of businesses, a few homes, or some schools and government offices. Everywhere you go, you’ll find the omnipresent trash can is replaced by Zero Waste Stations for recycling and compost. Wasteful, disposable products and packaging are replaced by environmentally-responsible alternatives. Everyone is committed to the same goal: a sustainable, local community.
Future Zero Wasters: Green Star Schools Create Recycling and Composting Experts; Celebrate Five Years in Boulder County
Who needs trash cans? Go to any one of Boulder County’s 31 Green Star Schools, and you’ll see that with the right training and systems in place, trash cans are passé.
Students practice Zero Waste all day—in the lunchroom, classroom and restroom. Not only do they compost and recycle up to 2/3 of all their school’s waste—they also practice waste reduction and reuse and are often the eco-champions in their homes.
“I can guarantee you that there are not many kids in America who are doing as much landfill diversion as our school kids are,” said Eco-Cycle’s Executive Director Eric Lombardi. “And that is a little flame of hope for the future—for their future—which makes the Green Star Schools program one of the most important programs that Eco-Cycle has ever created.”
View out our full list of Eco-Cycle's 31 Green Star Schools.
Zero Waste Isn't Just for Public Schools
Interested in making your child’s private school a Green Star School? Contact Nancy Dudek at 303-444-6634 ext. 175 to learn more about Zero Waste Certification for Private Schools.
Thank You to Our 5-Year Green Star Schools!
Congratulations to some of our early Green Star Schools—Mesa, Bear Creek, Creekside and Foothill Elementaries—celebrating their 5th anniversaries this year. The students, teachers, kitchen and custodial staff, and administrators at these schools have helped lead the way to expand and deliver the Green Star Schools program to now serve more than 15,000 students and staff throughout Boulder County. Thank you for your support and for bringing the future of sustainability to our kids today!
Congratulations, Cyndra!
Cyndra Dietz, Eco-Cycle Schools Recycling Coordinator since 1990, won the 2012 Pace Setters Award in the education category for her work in our local school districts. Over the past 21 years, she and her staff have given more than 20,000 classroom and field trip presentations, coordinated recycling collections of more than 18,000,000 pounds of materials and started the first Zero Waste schools program in America.
Thank you to all our Green Star School Sponsors. You are creating a generation of hopeful Zero Wasters.
What we still need for a Zero Waste community:
The Green Star Schools program is so successful there is now a four-year waiting list of schools wanting to implement the program! Eco-Cycle is seeking funds to increase staff and resources to meet the needs of these schools and their students. Please consider helping by becoming a Green Star School Sponsor.
Next article —
Zero Waste Community Partners: Redefining Business as Usual: There are no rules in Boulder County requiring businesses to recycle, but some businesses are taking exception to those rules... or lack thereof.
© 2012 Eco-Cycle, Inc. All Rights Reserved. No content published by Eco-Cycle may be copied or printed for any use without the expressed written consent of Eco-Cycle. Want to reprint or redistribute our content? Please contact us.
Zero Waste Community Partners: Redefining Business as Usual
There are no rules in Boulder County requiring businesses to recycle, but some businesses are taking exception to those rules... or lack thereof.
If every business could be like the Zero Waste businesses that work with Eco-Cycle, our community would be well on its way to recovering 70% or more of the waste we generate. And more businesses would be realizing the financial advantages of going for Zero.
The Longmont Area Chamber of Commerce recycles and composts everything it can at its office and at its events. According to Tracy Taylor-Sea, Event Marketing Director, “We want to use our leadership role to help educate businesses and community members about Zero Waste. I would say that it’s the easiest thing to bring into your business. It’s not difficult at all.”
At the Boulder Outlook Hotel & Suites, every room not only has a recycling bin, but also a compost bag. Guests can borrow a reusable drinking bottle, as well as a bike. It’s good for the environment, it’s fun for the guests, and it’s also good for business. Dan King, the Managing Owner said, “We have already generated in excess of $10,000 in revenues from new corporate customers and one-time guests who chose the hotel because of our commitment to Zero Waste with Eco-Cycle.”
Shopping at REI, you’ve no doubt seen and used their recycling and compost bins throughout the store. Behind the scenes, REI staff make exceptional efforts to recycle “hard-to-recycle” materials like plastic film, scrap metal, textiles and shoes, bike tires and tubes, and white block foam. After REI implemented its Zero Waste program, the store immediately cut its garbage by two-thirds. According to REI Shipping and Receiving Technical Specialist Tom Warner, “REI is all about the outdoors, and if you aren’t going to do something to make a better impact on the planet, then I don’t know if you can say you’re all about the outdoors. It was important to us to lessen our impact.”
What we still need for a Zero Waste Community:
Every single-family household in the City of Boulder has a recycling bin and a compost bin, and these households recover 57% of their discards. However, as a community, our recycling and composting rate is only 46%. Why? The business sector lags behind by recycling only 30% of its discards. Most communities reaching resource recovery rates of 70% and higher do so with the required participation of the business sector.
It’s time for businesses to step up and meet the residential sector in our efforts to go for Zero. Tell your city council members it’s time businesses participated in recycling like the rest of us. And let your favorite business know you want them to go for Zero Waste.
Zero Waste Around the World
Mandatory Recycling Makes a Difference: Leading communities such as San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, San Diego and Fresno recover at least 60% of their waste and require businesses to recycle.
Support Zero Waste Businesses!
View the full list of our Zero Waste Community Partners who work with Eco-Cycle to voluntarily reduce, reuse, recycle, compost and design their systems for Zero Waste. Or look for this decal in the window of participating businesses.
Welcome to the most recent businesses to join our network:
1825 Pearl Street, llc
Alfalfa’s Market
Asher Brewing Company
Atkinson-Noland & Associates
Boulder Housing Partners
Boxcar Coffee
Colorado Group
Convergence Solutions Inc.
Cured
Drop n Wash Laundry
Family Learning Center
Fine Featherheads
Greens Point Catering
Internachi
iSupportU
Juniper Books
Justice High School
LANX
McCryo
Mountain Ridge Animal Hospital
Naked Pizza
Native American Rights Fund
Pellman’s Automotive
Rally Software Development
ReSource
Select Energy Services
SparkFun Electronics
Two Spoons
Udis Bakery
Vitamin Cottage
Zach Transmissions
Join our business network of Zero Waste Partners. Call today! 303-444-6634 ext. 2
© 2012 Eco-Cycle, Inc. All Rights Reserved. No content published by Eco-Cycle may be copied or printed for any use without the expressed written consent of Eco-Cycle. Want to reprint or redistribute our content? Please contact us.
City of Boulder’s Proposed New Zero Waste Policy: A Fee On Single-Use Bags
The choice to use single-use bags comes at a price to the city in litter cleanup, pollution, and wasted energy and resources like natural gas, petroleum and trees. In accordance with the "polluter pays" principle, the price of choosing to pollute should be paid by the polluter, rather than by the community-at-large.
Several individuals and organizations, including Eco-Cycle, have recently been urging the Boulder City Council to join the movement gaining traction around the world to either ban or tax the use of wasteful, single-use plastic and paper bags.
Eco-Cycle strongly supports the idea of charging a small fee (10 cents) for single-use bags (both paper and plastic) distributed at the cash register in grocery stores and other large food-related stores. This fee will help Boulder significantly cut down on the estimated 46 million single-use bags distributed locally each year, plus:
- It’s a perfect example of “polluter pays,” a concept promoted by the U.S. EPA, the European Union, and other national policy bodies that a “polluter” must pay more than a non-polluter.
- No one needs to ever pay the single-use bag fee if they don’t want to. Instead, they can bring their own reusable bags. There is a choice!
- The fee approach protects individual freedoms to use a single-use bag if you want.
- Judging from successes in other communities, the fee approach will reduce checkout bag use by at least 50%.
- In the future, a ban on certain bags may be appropriate, but Eco-Cycle sees the “polluter fee” approach as the first step.
Let your city council members know you support a fee on single-use bags.
Do you already bring your own bag wherever you go? Thank you!
You use 93% fewer resources and produce 67% fewer greenhouse gas emissions by not choosing disposable bags!
Having trouble remembering to BYOB(ag)?
Check out our ChicoBag! It’s made with 99% post-consumer recycled materials and stuffs into a little pouch with a carabiner, so you can keep it compact and handy in your purse or backpack. Find it on our Eco-Store or at the Eco-Cycle CHaRM.
Zero Waste Around the World
Nearly 100 communities have banned or taxed single-use checkout bags, including the countries of Ireland, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Israel, Rwanda, Ethiopia, China, France and Italy.
Here in the U.S., more than 55 cities and 12 counties have enacted fees or bans against single-use bags. In Washington D.C., a five-cent fee on disposable bags has reduced their use by 80% and the money raised helps to clean up the Anacostia River. In Colorado, the towns of Aspen, Carbondale and Telluride have banned plastic checkout bags and placed a fee on paper checkout bags.
Next article —
Future Zero Wasters: Green Star Schools Create Recycling and Composting Experts; Celebrate Five Years in Boulder County
© 2012 Eco-Cycle, Inc. All Rights Reserved. No content published by Eco-Cycle may be copied or printed for any use without the expressed written consent of Eco-Cycle. Want to reprint or redistribute our content? Please contact us.
