Zero Waste

In February 2020, the City Council set the City and County of Broomfield on a path toward Zero Waste with the passage of Resolution 2020-65: “Adopting Zero Waste as a Guiding Principle and Supporting the Creation of a Zero Waste Plan.” The resolution establishes Zero Waste as a priority for the City & County and identifies waste diversion goals of 50% diversion by 2025 and Zero Waste by 2035. 

Zero Waste strategies are some of the fastest, easiest and least expensive ways for a community to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing waste, diverting materials from landfills can also create jobs, reduce impacts to habitat, preserve natural resources and improve community health.

What is Zero Waste?

Zero Waste is a systems approach to eliminating wasteful practices, setting up reuse, recycling, and composting systems to maximize the highest and best use of resources that can then be reinvested in the local economy to create more income, wealth, and jobs for residents. Zero Waste is all about successfully implementing Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, focusing first on Reduce and Reuse, then Recycling, Composting, and Redesigning the rest. Zero Waste will also reinvest quality, affordable resources into the community, such as surplus food, furniture, clothes and used building materials, helping many residents and businesses of Broomfield benefit by a better use of those products. 

Zero Waste is an aspirational goal. What is most important is the journey. Once a Zero Waste goal is adopted, implementing that goal is all about exploring why materials, products or packaging are discarded in the first place, and what can be done to set up new systems that can eliminate those wasteful practices or reuse, recycle, or compost those resources. If the hierarchy of Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle is implemented, Broomfield will achieve its Zero Waste goal, or get close to achieving it. 

Recommended Zero Waste Policies and Programs

The strategies prioritized in the Zero Waste Plan are laid out below: Also check out other Community Zero Waste Resources.