Colorado has always been one of the leaders in recycling and "going green," but lately that really hasn't been the case.

According to a report from Eco-Cycle, a non profit recycling company in Boulder, waste material going to the dump in our state has increased. The amount of materials recycled and composted also decreased from 17.9% in 2018 to 15.9% in 2019. The national average is 35% and the state goal for 2021 is 28%... So it's clear that we have some work to do.

Front Range communities produced about 90% of the state's waste, experiencing a 5% increase from the year before with only about a 1% increase in population.

24 Colorado cities of 10,000 residents or more (five of them from Weld County) do NOT provide universal recycling curbside service.

Even with these weak numbers, recycling efforts prevented nearly TWO MILLION metric tons of greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere...That equals about 400,000 cars being eliminated from the roads for a year.

So even with us slipping a bit in our recycling and composting efforts, we are making a difference and we need to keep going. Even more so because every little bit counts and matters in helping our planet.

The state of Colorado just introduced the Front Range Waste Diversion Fund, which looks to provide around $100 MILLION in grants over the next decade and about $2 MILLION to promote recycling and composting programs.

Let's get together and do OUR part to help clean things up and help our planet, because after all, there's only one Earth, and we need to take care of it and keep it clean.

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