Avon will introduce a commercial composting pilot program this fall

Avon plans to kick off its commercial composting pilot program this fall.

The Avon Town Council approved a 12-month composting pilot program for one hotel and four restaurants during its Aug. 26 meeting. The town will provide $40,000 in funding from its paper bag fee fund to support the program, which will begin ahead of ski season.

Introducing a composting program is one of Avon’s 2025 goals to reach its greenhouse gas emissions targets.

Reducing the waste the town contributes to the landfill by 90% by 2050 is one of the top five ways for Avon to reduce its greenhouse gas usage, according to Eagle County greenhouse gas emissions reduction modeling.

“The reason why it’s so high, as high as reducing vehicle miles traveled by gasoline cars, is because of the potential of composting,” said Charlotte Lin, Avon’s sustainability manager.

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The 2018 Northwest Colorado Waste Diversion study showed that food waste makes up over 30% of incoming waste to the Eagle County landfill, the largest contributing category by far (followed by construction debris at nearly 14%).

In March, the Town Council looked at several options for starting a composting program in town. The options included residential composting, with either curbside pickup or drop sites.

But Town Council members favored starting with a commercial composting program in an effort to achieve the highest impact with the least disruption. 

Vail and Eagle both have residential composting programs.

Vail kicked off the West Vail curbside compost pilot program in 2021. Eagle became the first Eagle County municipality to introduce curbside compost services for all residents in August 2023.

While Vail subsidizes the program by 50% for the first year, Eagle does not subsidize the program, which is incorporated into its trash and recycling services. Nearly 1,500 households participate in Eagle’s program, while 90 households and two homeowner’s associations participate in Vail’s program.

Expanding to residential may take grant support

If the commercial composting program is successful, Avon plans to expand the program to more businesses or look toward adding residential composting.

To subsidize some of the effort — a full-scale commercial composting program could cost the town $200,000 — the town’s sustainability department is looking to apply to the Colorado Circular Communities (C3) grant. Eligible projects must reduce waste, sequester carbon and promote a circular economy, all of which a composting program does.

Lin received word from the grant administrator that, with data from the commercial composting pilot program, Avon could be a good candidate for an impact grant of up to $250,000.

Is there interest in the program?

The five businesses included in the pilot program are all ready to begin composting.

“We do have more than four who have shown interest, it’s just that we were really selective in terms of who is ready to go,” Lin said.

While many businesses in Avon have shown interest in participating in a composting program, very few have actually started.

“One of the things we’ve identified is holding people back is things like frequency,” said Sarah Smith-Hymes, Avon’s sustainability coordinator. “The restaurants that have attempted it in the past, and we have several, abandoned it because of infrequent pickup, smell, the infrastructure wasn’t there, the frequency wasn’t there, there wasn’t enough economies of scale for the haulers to do it right.”

The “critical component for a successful compost program” is compost pickup at least four days per week, Smith-Hymes said.

The town’s support in building a larger-scale program will enable more frequent service. “The haulers are willing to do it,” Smith-Hymes said.

How Avon will fund the program

Avon will fully fund the one-year pilot program, with the $40,000 cost coming from the town’s paper bag fee fund. The fund, which makes approximately $55,000 in revenue per year on the sale of paper bags in town stores, must be used for sustainability initiatives.

In a typical year, $45,000 of the funding is committed to the town’s annual sustainability fair and composting in town facilities. But there is currently a surplus of $148,000 in the fund that will be used to fund the pilot program.

The town does not plan to subsidize the program in perpetuity. Rather, the sustainability department has a plan to eventually taper off the funding over the course of three years.

“Even though we can afford it now, I don’t know that we can afford it on a sustainable basis,” Underwood said.

Avon put out a Request for Proposals for a composting hauler on Thursday, with proposals due by Sept. 24.

“To be honest, with a pilot program of this size, we may not have to do this, but if we are doing it town-wide, or, let’s say, it gets really popular and it grows, we really don’t want four different haulers going everywhere four times a week,” Lin said.

Underwood asked for the Request for Proposals to include greenhouse gas data in addition to cost information. “We need to have the numbers of what it costs us in greenhouse gases to drive past the Honeywagon site to go to the Roaring Fork Valley, where Evergreen takes their compost,” Underwood said. “That number is probably more important than the dollar number.”