Denver has had residential curbside recycling for more than ten years now and, from what I’ve heard, it’s a pretty good program. The problem is, it’s only for single-family households and multi-family buildings of seven units or less. Multi-family buildings with eight units or more and commercial/office buildings… too bad!

Since Downtown Denver represents the greatest concentration of high-density residential and commercial uses in the city, one can assume that Downtown Denver probably generates more recyclable trash than anywhere else in the city. It doesn’t make any sense then, that the one place in our city with the greatest volume of recyclables is essentially excluded from our public recycling program. Public, as in your tax dollars pay for the program but you don’t get the service if you live in a condo building. (Same thing applies to regular trash pickup too.)

Of course, many people who live and work in the Downtown area do recycle, but doing so must be arranged through a private waste collection company, and you have to pay for the privilege. Since we’re trying to encourage higher-density living in Denver as part of being a more sustainable city, shouldn’t we be providing incentives (like, you know, free recycling) to residents living in multi-family buildings? In fact, maybe what we should do is make Denver residents who live in single-family homes arrange for private trash collection at their own expense (which is the case in many cities) but provide free municipal trash and recycling collection to residents who live in multi-family buildings. Wouldn’t that represent a more efficient use of our city tax dollars and a policy more consistent with our city’s sustainability goals?

There is some good news, however. In April 2008, the city launched a pilot program for municipal recycling collection in selected multi-family residential buildings in the Capitol Hill district. Let’s hope the program becomes permanent and is expanded to other areas in the urban core. Also, the Downtown Denver Partnership and the city recently launched a “single-stream” recycling program for the 16th Street Mall. Hopefully, that will be expanded one day throughout all of Downtown Denver.

Anyway, maximizing recycling in the region’s most densely populated urban place just makes sense and is the right and fair thing for the city to do. What do you think?