Student leadership wants to make the UMC a zero-waste building | Photo by Jeremy Papasso for the Camera

CU’s student leadership wants to make three buildings on campus zero-waste in five years: the UMC, the rec. center and Wardenburg.

To maintain a zero-waste standard, the three buildings will have to divert 90 percent — or 412,600 pounds — of their waste from landfills. Paper towel composting, further reduction of Styrofoam and sustainability training for employees are part of the legislation’s suggestions for reaching this goal.

A couple of CU seniors get serious about smashing down cardboard boxes at a recycling dumpster on campus | Daily Camera

The University of Colorado is making changes to its recycling program that will make participation twice as easy. (Actually, 2.5 times as easy, if you’re a math person.)

Now, recycling locations around CU still have five bins — which to a lot of us Boulderites seems, well, pretty old school. (Read more about they city’s single-stream recycling on BigGreenBoulder.) The  plan, according to an article in the Daily Camera, is to implement “dual-stream” recycling, which would cut the number of bins to two: one for paper and one for pretty much everything else.

Read more about it at DailyCamera.com.

The photo illustration of what can be composted that ran with the Longmont Times Call story on the city's new pilot composting program.

The city of Longmont plans to launch a pilot curbside composting program this spring, according to a story in today’s Times Call.

If the pilot is successful, Longmont will start a citywide program in 2011.

A year ago, Boulder expanded its own pilot curbside composting program to serve the entire city.

Eight months later, Boulderites were using the composting program — along with the single-stream recycling program — to divert 50 percent of their trash from the landfill.

If you live in Boulder County and you want to know how you can compost, check out the composting resource page on BigGreenBoulder. Read more about Longmont’s program here, or check out an article on the success of Boulder’s program at DailyCamera.com.

A kindergartner at Heatherwood Elementary school in Boulder drops her banana peel into the compost bin during lunch time | Daily Camera

About 50 percent of Boulder’s waste is being diverted from landfills, and instead, it’s getting recycled and composted.

Beginning last January, Boulder made curbside composting and single-stream recycling — where you can mix cans, bottles and paper together — available to everyone in the city.

From the Daily Camera:

From January to August this year — the period of time for the city’s study — Boulder residents composted 1,987 tons of yard waste and table scraps, while recycling 4,997 tons of paper, plastic and glass.

Combined, the efforts represent about half of the 14,000-or-so tons of material disposed of by residents during those eight months.

Kara Mertz, Boulder’s local environmental action manager, said it’s a huge achievement for a city that seeks to become “zero-waste.”

“We’re halfway there,” she said of the residential efforts.

Read the full story at DailyCamera.com, or learn about what can and can’t be recycled and composted at BigGreenBoulder.

Mostly, she helps out with communications, so she authored the school’s climate action plan, helps plan the Colorado satellite Bioneers conference, which is coming up on its seventh year in October, and helped to organize last year’s Rocky Mountain Sustainability Summit.

Check out Planet Green for more on Jessicca. And let us know about your own local green heroes in the comments!

Folsom Field's recycling stats are pretty impressive

CU’s football stadium is full of stats, but its number of trash cans might impress us most. Turns out almost all containers of what you can eat or drink at Folsom Field is recyclable or compostable already — and it’s still improving. From PlanetGreen:

Equipped with the necessary compost and recycling bins, he says the only trash produced is from coffee cup lids, snack chip bags, and candy wrappers. For now, that trash goes into the recycling bins and gets sorted out later (by students, as all the recycling on campus is done), but soon they’re going to stop selling candy in non-recyclable wrappers, and in part because of the university’s influence, Newport said, Frito-Lay is now producing SunChips in compostable packaging.

Read more about Folsom’s zero-waste plans here or after the jump.

CU to make home games at Folsom Field zero-waste

Originally published Aug. 5, 2008, in the Daily Camera.

By Brittany Anas

The University of Colorado is pledging to become “zero waste” at Folsom Field this football season — an environmental program that will mean no more trash cans in the stadium, valet parking for fans who arrive on bikes and compostable nacho trays.

CU officials made the announcement Tuesday, and the Buffs will become the first major collegiate or professional sports program in the nation to tackle a zero-waste challenge, said CU Athletic Director Mike Bohn.

About 60 tons of game-day garbage was sent to landfills last football season, amounting to an average of 10 tons of trash fromeach home event.

This season, environmental czars expect to recycle or compost 90 percent of the waste from home football games.

Student volunteers will staff the 50-some recycling stations throughout the stadium, helping football fans toss their trash into the right bins. CU’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps units will help with cleaning up after games.

Finished compost will be returned to CU for campus landscaping.

Nearly all the food and drinks sold in Folsom will be packaged in recyclable or compostable containers, according to the school. CU will contract with Boulder-based Eco-Products Inc., which makes biodegradable products, such as sugarcane plates and corn cutlery, that will compost — unlike petroleum-based that depend on oil.

Since there will be no trash cans, non-recyclable garbage — most of which will have been brought in by fans — will be plucked out of the recycle bins after the game.

CU spokesman Bronson Hilliard quipped that security officers won’t be patting down fans for cardboard, or banning non-recyclable items like candy wrappers from coming into the stadium.

White Wave Foods is the primary sponsor of the program, which has been dubbed “Ralphie’s Green Stampede” with the stadium in turn advertising the Boulder-based organic-food company.

The university has not conducted a formal cost analysis of the program, Hilliard said. The school expects the launch will be low cost, and the newly stepped-up green measures won’t cost more to conduct than current clean-up practices.

“With this measure, CU Athletics is taking a bold step, in sync with its student, faculty and campus leadership, toward keeping CU at the vanguard of sustainability leaders, where it has been for nearly 40 years,” said Dave Newport, director of the CU’s Environmental Center.

The nation’s first student-led environmental center was born atCU on Earth Day in 1970. In 2000, CU students voted to purchase renewable wind-energy credits to match power used in all major campus construction projects, also a first for college campuses.

The student-union this year also began requiring all student-funded events that include food to be zero waste.

CU is supporting Gov. Bill Ritter’s climate action plan that targets a 20 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2020 and an 80 percent reduction by 2050. CU officials say the athletic department’s new pledge is another step toward carbon neutrality on the campus.

The zero-waste and recycling efforts in Folsom could save as much as 455 million BTUs of energy — equivalent to the total annual energy use of four U.S. households, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

CU’s athletic department also will invest in local carbon-reduction projects to match energy used to power the stadium and for the football team’s travel.

In an effort to encourage fans to ride their bikes to games, there will be valet bike parking at the nearby Franklin Field.

Victoria Garcia, a CU student body president, said she hopes that the campus’ program becomes a model for other schools nationwide to follow.