Loveland beat Fort Collins in 2017 residential waste diversion rates — Loveland diverted 61 percent and Fort Collins diverted 29 percent. “Loveland is “ahead of the curve” because the city handles its own trash collection,” said Stephen Gillette, director of the Solid Waste Program for Larimer County. In Fort Collins, the service is contracted to private waste collection companies.
As the Larimer County Landfill nears capacity, the neighboring communities of Fort Collins and Loveland are working to reduce the amount of waste that ends up there in the first place. While Fort Collins and Loveland both make a concerted effort to keep waste out of the landfill, the cities have historically enjoyed different levels of success in reaching that goal. However, due to the differences in waste programs and different methods of data collection, it gets into a territory that Gillette refers to as “fuzzy math.”
Caroline Mitchell, senior environmental planner for the city of Fort Collins, said that another thing contributing to the gap between city diversion rates is the lack of organic composting available in Fort Collins. “Yard waste and food waste — which isn’t collected curbside in either community right now — are really the next big diversion opportunities in Fort Collins and across the nation,” Mitchell said.
Enter the North Front Range Wasteshed Coalition, a project aiming to help the cities explore alternatives to a new landfill as they look toward the future of waste management in Northern Colorado. The project has a variety of purposes including standardizing waste data collection, implementing effective landfill diversion strategies and helping the cities prepare to deal with waste in other ways. Currently, the coalition is exploring projects like a waste transfer station, a composting facility for yard waste and food waste, and a material recycling facility for construction wastes — like concrete. The coalition is in the preliminary stages of planning a regional composting facility that would help the cities divert more waste.
Read the full story at https://www.coloradoan.com/story/life/2018/08/17/loveland-fort-collins-waste-diversion-rates/749260002/#/questions/1709525.