Since it was studied in 2018, Steamboat Springs’ diversion rate — a measure of how much waste is kept out of a landfill through recycling or composting — has increased by 60%. But while that’s an impressive increase percentage-wise, the jump from 9% waste diverted as previously estimated to 14.4% in the last three months of 2022 is well short of the city’s long-term goals. That goal, part of the Routt County Climate Action Plan, is 46% waste diverted by the end of the decade. “It’s going to be a hard stretch,” said Alicia Archibald, Steamboat’s community recycling coordinator. “There are not many communities in the state of Colorado or in the country that have a diversion rate that high.”
The Environmental Protection Agency estimates the nationwide diversion rate is around 32%. In Colorado, things are half that, with the statewide diversion rate being just 16%, according to a 2022 State of Recycling in Colorado report. Steamboat’s 14.4% diversion rate comes from data reported to the city by the two main trash haulers, Twin Enviro and Waste Management. Of all waste produced, 12.2% of that is recycled and 2.2% is composted. The other 85.6% of waste ends up in a landfill.
Steamboat has had an ordinance that required trash haulers to provide a recycling can when they offered trash cans for residential clients. The city just passed a new commercial recycling ordinance that starts the process to require businesses and multi-family residences to recycle as well. Archibald said these requirements should help continue to see an increase in diversion rate. “It won’t happen overnight, but we should see continued change just from that ordinance,” Archibald said. “With the outreach that I’m doing, I think we’re going to see a lot of change.” A positive sign from the new diversion data is that Steamboat had a low contamination rate of just 15.6%. Archibald said that is really low — communities often average between 25% and 35%. She had been assuming the contamination rate could be as high as 40% before receiving this data.