Denver expands curbside compost collection

Denver’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure (DOTI) has announced that it will be expanding compost collection service to 13,400 households.

Households in Denver’s Solid Waste Collection District 3—the Park Hill, Central Park and parts of the East Colfax neighborhoods—will be included. District 3 currently has approximately 5,300 compost customers, according to DOTI.

The department will deliver carts to new customers who have requested them starting in November along with small kitchen pails and a compost how-to guide. Once service begins in November, residents of the district can request service at any time.

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DOTI is rolling out weekly compost service district by district, focusing on helping customers understand what items to place in carts. DOTI completed rollouts of compost collection to residents in SWC Districts 4, 5 and 8 earlier this year, and SWC District 2 last year, and followed up with auditing and educating customers, a process that involves checking carts for contamination and tagging those carts to let residents know what they put in their carts that shouldn’t be in there. Contaminated loads of compost can be turned away by the city’s compost processor, DOTI says.

In January 2023, Denver moved to a volume-based pricing model for waste collection service to curb the amount of waste the city sends to the landfill. Residents pay for what they throw based on their trash cart size, with weekly recycling and composting included at no additional cost. With this rollout, about 62 percent of the city’s customers will have access to compost collection service, according to DOTI.