DENVER — It’s now been one year since Denver launched its “pay as you throw” trash collection service, offering free recycling and composting pick-up in the hopes of improving the city’s low diversion rates.
Delivery of compost carts started in July. Yet, Denver7 continues to hear from frustrated and confused residents as to why they have not received theirs. Some even decreased the size of their trash carts in anticipation of recycling and composting more of their waste.
Nana Lea, who lives in the West Washington Park neighborhood, contacted Denver7 hoping to find answers. She has been composting for decades, and it has become her passion.
When her backyard composter broke, she opted not to replace it since she expected a compost cart from the city to be quickly delivered. In the meantime, she has been freezing the food she doesn’t eat to drive it to the composting center herself.
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“It’s like gold,” Lea laughed, holding up her frozen bags of food scraps. “And it just breaks my heart to see food put in the trash. It’s just not necessary, and it does such good stuff from the gardens. So I’m willing to go, obviously, extra steps to get things composted.”
Still, Lea said her patience is growing thin. She’s spent hours on the phone with city workers, she said, trying to learn when her cart will be delivered.
City trucks already pick up composting for several of her neighbors who paid for the service before the citywide rollout. Rather than continue to drive her frozen compostables into the center, Lea said she would pick up her green compost cart herself “in a New York minute.”
Denver7 reached out to the city about this issue. We’re told residents cannot pick up their own carts because the rollout of citywide composting has been intentionally slow with one collection district per quarter getting the service.
Neighborhoods with traditionally low recycling and composting rates have been chosen to receive the service earlier, with city workers monitoring the amount of non-compostable items ending up in the composting carts. That way, workers can educate residents on the composting process and prevent further contamination before moving on to other neighborhoods.
“The education piece is critical to the success of the program, and the goal is to make sure residents are using the service correctly before moving on to the next area,” said spokesperson Nancy Kuhn. “Contaminated loads of compost can be turned away by the city’s compost processor.”
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The city completed delivery of carts to Solid Waste Collection (SWC) District 2 last year, which includes City Park, Elyria-Swansea, Five Points, and parts of Globeville. Residents in SWC District 4 are next to receive services and should expect to receive their carts in February, according to a release from the Denver Department of Transportation and Infrastructure.
For Lea and her West Washington Park neighbors in SWC District 6, no projected delivery date has been set. The city said previously it aims to complete the citywide rollout by the end of 2025.
“I don’t want to wait that long,” Lea said, exasperated.
She said she will continue to freeze her food scraps and drive them in to be composted herself.
“I’m gonna have to,” she said. “It just breaks my heart to put it in the trash. So, I don’t see any other way around it.”