Many in the Denver Metro have new composting guidelines
If you compost you may be used to throwing all kinds of different compostable materials in your compost bin to be hauled away. Those days may have come to an end because now there are new rules about what you can and can't put in you bin.
A1 Organics produce compost for farmers and landscapers from materials they collect around the Denver Metro.
They say for a while now they have been getting things into their facility that don't belong in a compost bin.
"It could be a bottle, glass bottle that didn't belong in there. It could be an entire bag of trash that got thrown into the bin. It could be something as simple as a fruit sticker or a twine around a stack of fruit," said Clinton Sander the Marketing Manager for A1 Organics.
That's a problem for them because it makes the compost they produce virtually unusable.
"In order to do what we're doing the incoming materials need to be clean," Sander said.
For years, they have been just taking contaminants out, but with the growth of the metro area and the increased popularity of composting that's become nearly impossible.
"Picking through this trying to get this out. That's not a fun job," Sander said.
That's why starting April 1 composters in communities they serve will only be allowed to put organic waste in their bins.
"Food scraps, yard waste and trimming," Sander said. "We need to reset the stream focus on what's really valuable."
They hope this won't be forever. Once they have a nice clean stream they may start accepting more compostable items.
"We can build a great understanding of what goes in the bill, then maybe we can reintroduce some of these other materials," Sander said.
For now, if you want to keep composting then you need to play by the rules. A1 believes this community can pull it off.
"We can do this together. This is the start," Sander said.
