HomeMy WebLinkAboutMemo - Mail Packet - 6/28/2016 - Memorandum From John Bartholow And Natural Resources Advisory Board Re: Community Recycling Ordinance - June 28 Work Session ItemEnvironmental Services
215 N. Mason
PO Box 580
Fort Collins, CO 80522
970.221-6600
970.224-6177 - fax
fcgov.com
MEMORANDUM
FROM THE CITY OF FORT COLLINS
NATURAL RESOURCES ADVISORY BOARD
DATE: June 15, 2016
TO: Mayor and City Council Members
FROM: John Bartholow on behalf of the Natural Resources Advisory Board
CC: Darin Atteberry, City Manager
SUBJECT: Community Recycling Ordinance - June 28 Council Work Session Item
The Natural Resources Advisory Board reaffirms our recommendation of the Community
Recycling Ordinance as proposed in December 2015 without the significant changes which
appear in the current CRO proposal.
The NRAB received several briefings from staff and one of our members actively participated in
both the Road to Zero Waste and the Community Recycling Ordinance Advisory Groups. NRAB
wholeheartedly endorsed and recommended the proposed ordinance presented to the Council in
December 2015. NRAB has now received a staff briefing and reviewed a dramatically altered
Community Recycling Ordinance as of June 15, 2016 and one of our members met with staff to
better understand the terms and implications of this altered version of the ordinance initially
proposed in 2015.
The Council’s adoption of the Road to Zero waste emphasized the importance of conserving the
resources that are already at work in the community, whether human, manufactured or natural. It
set a goal of 75% waste reduction by 2020 and 90% or more by 2025.These goals, similar to the
Climate Action Plan goals, requires a basic culture change that moves increasingly away from
waste to seeing all discards as potential resources for others to use, perhaps in a new way as
another process or product. In short it emulates natural systems. The Council and staff
recognized that such culture change would take time, a great deal of community education,
committed models and aggressive leadership.
The Road to Zero Waste Plan identified the first critical steps in this process as:
1. extending waste diversion services beyond single family residences to provide multi-
family residents and businesses with have similar access to new alternatives to
landfill waste disposal; and
2. incorporating organics recycling/composting services for Fort Collins residents and
businesses.
The Community Recycling Ordinance proposed in December 2015 creatively tackled these
challenges and provided a phased-in approach to multi-family and business/commercial services,
yard waste collection followed by food scrap collection and processing over the next 2-3 years.
The ordinance now before the Council does not do so. At best it tweaks an existing system
2
without aggressively addressing the primary goals of The Road to Zero Waste or the responses
of residents in the public meetings and surveys completed over the last year. 25% of GHG
reduction goals for the Climate Action Plan by 2020 are estimated to be met by the December
2015 Community Recycling Ordinance implementation. That projected reduction would be
virtually eliminated by the current proposal.
The current proposal before the Council:
totally defers food waste collection in any sector “until a future date”
totally defers restaurant food waste collection “until a future date”
defers recycling services to multi-family until 2022 (except for new customers who must
be implemented upon signing
defers business recycling until a start date of 2017, but then at a rate of only 20% per year
through 2022
uses an incline rate of 75% of trash cart rate, but provides haulers with a surcharge or
base rate of up to 25% of the lowest cart rate
Though we thank staff for all of their hard work on this, the NRAB believes that the previous
(2015) ordinance proposal better meets the needs of the citizens of Fort Collins and is really the
only way to achieve the ambitious goals we have adopted.