Boulder Zero Waste For Zero Loss

10/15/2023

"Boulder has set a target to divert 85 percent of the city’s waste away from landfills by 2025. The former hospital’s deconstructed building materials, and specifically its structural steel, will be used to construct a new fire station and other projects within the city. The firehouse, to be located at 30th and Valmont in Boulder, is scheduled to open in mid-2024. During an early deconstruction phase, the hospital’s pumps, motors, doors, and fixtures, as well as other materials, were auctioned rather than dumped into landfills.

The 250,000-sf hospital’s demolition occurred in two phases, says Rob Sevier, Ameresco’s Senior Account Executive in Denver: the interior demo began in 2019, was slowed because of COVID, and was completed last year. The exterior demo—which includes removing the hospital’s concrete floors, steel, and exteriors—required new permits before it was started last March. Sevier says the deconstruction should be completed sometime this fall."

Three quarters of a closed hospital’s building materials and equipment are being reused for new construction, or resold.

04/14/2023

"BOULDER'S GREEN RESUME
- First city in the U.S. to tax itself for the acquisition of open spaces
- The highest number of certified B Corps in the nation (businesses who prioritize their social and environmental efforts as much as revenue)
- The largest concentration of natural products companies in the nation
- Many leading solar and cleantech organizations are based in Boulder
- No. 1 most bikeable city in the U.S.
- Boulder diverts 57% of its waste from landfills. You’ll see recycling and composting bins everywhere."

How to plan an eco-friendly meeting in eco-friendly Boulder, a green meeting destination.

08/31/2022

"[Colorado's] Plastic Pollution Reduction Act, signed into law last summer, phases out single-use plastic bags, polystyrene cups and containers and reverses a law that prohibits municipalities from passing individual ordinances to address plastic waste.
[...]
'Colorado's new law helps us implement systemic change to turn off the faucet and stem the flow of plastic consumption, especially of unnecessary plastic items like single-use bags and polystyrene takeout containers,' Moorman [Eco-Cycle's director of legislative and community campaigns] added.

The state plastics bill also reversed municipal preemption, allowing Boulder to create policies as strict as the state's or stricter."

https://www.dailycamera.com/2022/08/26/boulder-rethinking-disposable-bag-fee-other-plastic-waste-measures/

yahoo.com/entertainment/boulder-rethinking-disposable-bag-fee-040100921.html

With the statewide disposable bag fee set to take effect at the start of 2023 and the other measures being phased in the following year, Boulder climate staff are beginning to plan for the effects …

01/06/2022

Reuse, repurpose, renew, revitalize, re-imagine, restore, resell.
This is a guide to all of Boulder's thrift stores!

https://www.instagram.com/p/CXwO2a6l17c/

12/23/2021

"'We accept as much as we can authentically and responsibly market. Aluminum manufacturers are very happy to receive it. It’s a great closed loop because the market for it is going right back to aluminum manufacturing. Plastics can only be recycled once or twice, but aluminum or steel can be recycled infinitely.'
Eco-Cycle also operates the Center for Hard to Recycle Materials at 6400 Arapahoe Ave. in Boulder. Items recycled at the so-called CHARM center include books, mattresses, box springs, electronics, scrap metal, vegetable oil, cables, wires, printer cartridges, plastic bags, pallet-wrapping film, clothing, textiles, bicycles and bike parts, bike tires and tubes, freon-fueled appliances, other small appliances, fire extinguishers, ceramics, sinks, toilets, concrete, plate glass, white foam packaging, and large plastic items such as laundry baskets and children’s wading pools.
'The books often go to schools or dentist’s offices,' Matsch said, 'and we have a book collector that looks for valuable old ones.' CHARM partners with Denver-based Springback to take mattresses and box springs, and Blue Star Recyclers, which she described as a 'fellow social-enterprise nonprofit that hires 80% employees with disabilities.'”

According to the latest virtual pandemic-related humor, Americans who are staying home because of COVID-19 are buying so many items online that when a household doesn’t receive a package for a coup…

12/01/2021

"Through the new and improved, subscription-based Green Bag Giveaway program, the city is offering local businesses free, compostable trash bags for a year.
The city hopes to support local businesses by curbing some of the costs and hassle associated with commercial composting, while simultaneously helping Boulder achieve its ambitious zero waste goals."

Revamped program offers Boulder businesses a year’s worth of free compostable trash bags via subscription service Pearl Street is in bloom, the masks are coming off and the forecast for summer 2021 in Boulder is looking bright. As local restaurants and shops open their doors once again, the City o...

11/20/2021

"As part of this zero-waste commitment and to keep takeout containers out of the landfill, too, the city has teamed up with repEATer to offer a sustainable alternative: reusable takeout containers.
[...]
'We invite all Boulder-area restaurants to consider joining the repEATer program,' said Senior Sustainability Coordinator Emily Freeman. 'Not only is repEATer a great way to reduce takeout waste, but it can also help restaurants reduce their bottom line by minimizing the costs associated with single-use containers.'”

City of Boulder partners with repEATer to offer local businesses and diners zero-waste dining Did you know that Boulder residents generate an average of nearly three pounds of waste each day, with more than one pound of that waste headed directly to the landfill? The City of Boulder has set a goal o...

09/19/2021

N**e Foods Market opens Boulder's first zero waste grocery store. No plastic packaging in sight - everything comes in reusable, returnable glass jars and is local, organic or rescued. Plus they're always lower cost than Wholefoods. Check them out at Walnut and 32nd. www.nudefoodsmarket.com

If there’s something you want that you don’t see in our store, you can put in a request here and we’ll do our best to add it.

09/05/2021

"Gov. Jared Polis a year ago declared Colorado would move from being a recycling laggard to a leader. A state goal set in 2017 calls for recycling 45% of trash statewide by 2036.
Denver climate activists got more involved this month, submitting 17,000 signatures for a Waste No More ballot measure that would let voters decide whether businesses, including large apartment blocks, must provide composting and recycling pickup services. Proponents contend this would cut in half the amount Denver buries in landfills."

Nearly every family in Denver participates in the city’s recycling program and yet last year about 500 tons of trash per person arrived in a landfill. The question is what to do about those n…

07/12/2021

"A bill banning single-use plastics and foam polystyrene food containers with exceptions received final approval from the Colorado General Assembly on Tuesday and is going to Gov. Jared Polis' desk for signature.
Under HB21-1162, stores and retail food establishments will not be allowed to provide the single-use items to customers, but 'a retail food establishment that is a restaurant and not a store or convenience store may provide single-use plastic carryout bags,' the bill reads."

The state legislature sent the bill to Gov. Polis' desk for signature after giving final approval on Tuesday.