Steamboat Springs City Council members moved last week to adopt a temporary ordinance aimed at incentivizing recycling efforts by commercial entities.

Adopted on a first ordinance reading by council members last Tuesday, the new mandate comes a little more than a year after council enacted a March 2023 recycling ordinance requiring commercial waste customers to adjust their recycling capacity to at least 50% of their trash service capacity in terms of container sizes and collection frequency.

That ordinance, which requires 100% compliance by July 31, also establishes a waiver process whereby commercial customers could request the recycling capacity limit be reduced if they faced excessive costs and space constraints related to adding recycling capacity; or if they were sharing space with another commercial capacity or were able to make use of an alternative recycling option.

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Given the high number of waiver applications received by the city, council members directed staff in September to create an administrative process to help reduce the number of waivers granted to commercial waste users claiming space constraint limitations.

Steamboat Planning & Community Development Director Rebecca Bessey provided examples of the type of space constraints facing commercial trash customers by showing pictures where an existing dumpster is housed inside of a trash enclosure.

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“Sometimes to enlarge that existing dumpster enclosure or to add a new dumpster enclosure, there might not be a lot of room on the existing developed site or replace existing uses on the site, things like landscaping and parking,” Bessey said.

To address the need to make those changes, Bessey explained the proposed temporary measure aims to streamline the review of proposed site improvements needed to add recycling capacity space by limiting the financial burden facing commercial users and minimizing impacts on city staff charged with reviewing the applications.

In doing this, the mandate would allow for variation to standards where relief is needed, and specifies that variances will be limited to only those necessary for addressing space constraints so long as the granted variances do not adversely impact the natural environment, adjacent properties or public welfare.

The proposed two-year temporary mandate, which would go into effect June 15, creates an administrative process akin to the city’s minor modification process; but it allows the planning director to approve variances to standards in certain situations when they are needed to bring a commercial trash user into compliance with the March 2023 recycling ordinance.

“Those types of variance requests might be when they need to replace some sort of landscaping, snow storage area, parking or if they need to encroach in a set-back because that is the only place on the site to add additional capacity to their dumpster enclosure,” Bessey said. “Not all recycling modification plans will require variances. Some might; this would keep those variances in an administrative process rather than kicking it into planning commission process and city council review, which is more time consuming and a more costly process for applicants to go through.”

Along with saving time and money for commercial trash users, and city staff, Bessey said the ultimate goal of the temporary measure is to reduce the number of granted recycling waivers as a way to increase waste diversion rates.

“The temporary nature of this ordinance is deliberate and intended to create an incentive, or a push to get people in the door now rather than people say: ‘Well, I will just ask for a waiver and kick this can down the road,'” Bessey said.

Alicia Archibald, the city’s community recycling coordinator, said commercial trash and recycling haulers serving the city have reported roughly 55% of their customers are complying with the March 2023 recycling ordinance — a figure falling short of the city’s goal.

“We are not at the target that we wanted to be in January, (which was 66%), we are not quite there at the full rollout, but the communications are going on, and at this point the lack of room to put some of the infrastructure in place is part of the pushback,” Archibald said.

She also added that a large amount of commercial trash users are unaware of the city’s recycling ordinance, which states that fines would be imposed beginning in March 2025 to those entities that are not in compliance.

“We are hoping that the waiver process and the modification plan will help get them going so we are not at the end in March 2025, when the fines can be assessed,” Archibald said. “That that is what they are waiting for. We are hoping to get it rolling before then.”