Fort Collins, Colo. Revamps Hauling System Aiming to Boost Recycling and Organics Recovery

Colorado’s City of Fort Collins, which has long had an open market waste and recycling system, just introduced a single-hauler program and onboarded Republic Services as its vendor.

The transition to this fundamentally different model follows a year and a half of community engagement and research and is driven by what came from that work.

“Residents and businesses told us they wanted more composting and more recycling. And we found through our analysis that a contracted hauler system would be the most cost-effective way to deliver those services,” says Caroline Mitchell, lead waste reduction and recycling specialist, City of Fort Collins.

Residents who go with Republic (they can stay with their previous provider for a small fee) put their recycling to the curb weekly rather than biweekly. And now yard waste collections are included in their basic service cost; prior they could opt for green waste pick up for an additional fee.

Actually, several drivers steered the city toward the single-hauler agreement, namely around fee structure, routing efficiencies, and environmental considerations.

“Early in our [vetting] process we worked with community members, haulers, and city council members, and ultimately landed on a few goals: one was to achieve more affordable, consistent, predictable pricing,” Mitchell says.

The city asked residents for copies of their bills to get clear on who was paying what fee for what service—price points vary in open markets and may not be fixed throughout the community. 

This early research found up to a six-dollar price difference per month for the same service by the same provider in the same neighborhoods, while the new agreement establishes set pricing based on defined criteria, subject to no more than a once-yearly rate increase.

Fort Collins anticipates other benefits associated with more streamlined collection routes.

“[Before] you could have three haulers servicing neighborhoods for trash, recycling, and compost with nine trucks coming through every week, as opposed to three of them for a single-hauler contract. With fewer trucks you are increasing safety, decreasing emissions, and improving air quality," Mitchell says.

The new contract and model follow years of transformations to Fort Collins’ waste and recycling strategy, in reach of the city’s zero waste goals—90 percent diversion by 2025 and 100 by 2030.

Initiatives range from grocer food scrap collections to bans on single-use plastic bags.

One of the earliest moves, back in the 1990s, was to require haulers to offer recycling to single-family households; vendors later had to provide this option to all multiunit dwellings and businesses too, and recycling had to constitute 33 percent of their service offerings.

The city turned to pay as you throw, incentivizing diversion with free recycling and knocking down fees for lower trash volumes.

Fort Collins went on to ban landfilling electronics and to become Colorado’s first community to require corrugated cardboard to be recycled or reused, returning thousands of tons of would-be-trash into the market while helping to reach toward a city goal, which at the time was to divert 50 percent of the total waste stream from landfill.

The city push to bump both recycling and organics collections has been ongoing for years. The new single-hauler contract is preceded by a program giving rebates to multiunit households and commercial locations to incentive them to put recyclables and green waste in the bins—practices the community in general has showed interest in, with work to heighten their awareness.

“We found the rebates helped start conversations with folks that had not been interested in [recycling and organics collections] before. While it was an incentive for many locations to take the step and start [diverting], once they started the program the rebate was less important to them,” Mitchell says.  They just wanted to recycle and see their organics recovered.

Fort Collins has leveraged policy to try and go further, requiring new construction and remodels to plan for trash and recycling. Commercial property owners are encouraged to establish design guidelines to accommodate food scrap collections for high-organics-generating tenants.

Recognizing the complexities around collections in multiunit buildings, Mitchell and her colleagues help property managers with the process— especially with certain demographics. 

“Fort Collins is a college town with a massive shift in residents each summer, and we provide multiunit property managers materials and guidelines each spring so they are prepared for the transition, and we support them in troubleshooting,” Mitchell says. Newcomers get information packets, and recycling and organics diversion become part of lease-signing conversations.

Still there are times that the plan just is not working. When Mitchell goes out to see what’s going on, sometimes she finds the resolution is as simple as reorienting bins and working with haulers to ensure those bins stay in that orientation. Placements that are the easiest to service are not always the easiest for residents to access. Sometimes there’s a quicker fix yet—maybe just putting signage in clear site.

With the rollout of the new citywide hauling arrangement, came new issues to iron it. Swapping out old bins for new ones at over 35,000 households and getting those households up to speed on changes is a big and pricey job.

The bins were funded by a $664,000 grant awarded by The Recycling Partnership, with backing from The American Beverage Association’s (ABA) Every Bottle Back initiative.

The Partnership also provided education and technical assistance to smoothen out the bumps in the road, advising on roll out timing and providing instructions around picking up old carts and the new service schedule.

“The best practices The Partnership shared helped us anticipate challenges and plan around them. Additionally, they were instrumental in shaping our communications about the rollout, helping us to improve recycling behaviors, while the funding is enabling us to provide more affordable services,” says Emily Wenger, lead specialist, environmental sustainability, City of Fort Collins.

The Partnership and ABA have worked together on over 50 grants in the past five years, with the beverage association among multiple supporters of The Partnership’s carts, multifamily, contamination reduction, and materials recovery facilities projects.

“This Fort Collins project is a great example of what is possible through our collaborations. Increased access [to resources to support diversion] is critical to ensuring what can be recycled is recycled,” says Cody Marshall, chief optimization officer, The Recycling Partnership.

As Fort Collins advances its new hauler model, it will watch for outcomes to guide next steps. Plans are to conduct another competitive purchasing process in five years based on community feedback and to adapt to any changes that may occur.