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Consultants: Chaffee County waste audits find food scraps, textiles and mixed 'other' top landfill inputs; five materials prioritized for diversion
Summary
RRS consultants presented a midway waste‑audit report showing food scraps (14.6%) and a large 'other' category are the top inputs; they recommend prioritizing clean wood, soil, concrete, uncoated cardboard and yard trimmings for diversion based on local end‑market availability.
Jackie Kerouac Fram, a senior consultant with Resource Recycling Systems (RRS), delivered a midway report on Chaffee County's landfill waste audits and the county's work with the Colorado Circular Communities STEPS program. "As I said, my name is Jackie Kerouac Fram. I'm a senior consultant with RRS," she told the board, then summarized the project's objectives: two municipal solid waste (MSW) audits and one construction and demolition (C&D) audit to identify materials that can be diverted and whether there are viable end markets.
The MSW audit sampled 21 loads (about 4,700 pounds total) across residential, commercial and multifamily sources. "Food scraps is the number 1 at 14.6%," Fram said, and she noted that a large 'other' category (textiles, mixed C&D debris and items that don't fit other categories) accounted for the largest share overall. Breaking subcategories into recoverability, Fram reported that "about 26% is theoretically eligible for recycling and about 24% is eligible for composting," leaving roughly half the stream unlikely to be recovered under current local options.
RRS also reported results from a 66‑sample C&D audit (nearly 80 tons), which found wood — including clean untreated lumber and significant amounts of painted or treated wood — as the largest single C&D material. The consultants estimated that about "62% recyclable, theoretically, or about 6,700 tons" of the C&D stream could be diverted prior to an end‑market assessment. They emphasized that clean wood, dirt/soil, concrete, uncoated cardboard/paper bags and branches/stumps offer the best mix of diversion potential and local end‑market access.
The presentation included an end‑market methodology that searched for buyers within roughly 200 miles, ranking markets by distance, acceptance fees and the county's baseline disposal cost ($64/ton). Fram said the research prioritized materials both for technical recoverability and for economic viability in Chaffee County. The team noted some charting errors on a slide (food scraps placement) and committed to amending the draft memo and slides before the final report. The second MSW audit is scheduled for September 2026, with a final report and presentation targeted for early 2027.
