8 JULY 17-23, 2025 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Trash and Carry DENVER’S FIRST COMMERCIAL COM- POSTING FACILITY HAS OPENED IN THE NATIONAL WESTERN CENTER. BY CATIE C HESHIRE The National Western Center campus in Denver’s Globeville, Elyria-Swansea area is designed to attract visitors from across the country for the annual National Western Stock Show and a myriad of other events. That’s a lot of trash to deal with after each event, so Compost Colorado and the National Western Center have partnered to reuse food waste on the campus. There are now two shipping container-sized units on an unused parking lot on the campus transforming waste into useable, nutrient-rich soil. Organic waste collected on the campus will go directly back to the campus and the greater surrounding neighborhood. Com- post Colorado and the National Western Center hope their collaboration can light the way for other organizations looking to reduce what they send to the landfi ll, especially as Denver is still trying to roll out a 2022 ballot initiative designed to require composting in all businesses in the city. “Part of what’s happening in event centers and on campuses and in communities across the country and across Colorado is waste is being produced, and then it’s ending up being shipped out to a landfi ll, or maybe even being shipped out to a recycling facility,” says Noah Kaplan, executive director of Compost Colo- rado. “Oftentimes, when it comes to organics, you’re shipping that stuff out very, very far, so you’re eating into the environmental benefi t of having diverted it from a landfi ll.” With this partnership, waste doesn’t need to get hauled even a few miles. Garbage is given new life right where its life cycle would otherwise end. Compost Colorado was founded in 2019 by Vann Fussell, a local environmentalist, to help people and businesses compost more easily. Since then, the city of Denver has switched to a trash system where every single-family house- hold gets compost as part of the city waste services in an attempt to fi x Denver’s poor waste diversion rate. But that system doesn’t help those who live in multifamily housing or local businesses, so Compost Colorado still serves over 2,000 members, processing over 2 million pounds of organic waste each year. According to National Western Center chief operating offi cer Joe McCullough, Com- post Colorado was able to rapidly step in and help haul compost from the Colorado Con- vention Center, where McCullough used to work, when a previous contract fell through. When McCullough moved to the National Western Center, he knew that mitigating waste would be important and wanted to start up a composting program. “When I looked them up, they were liter- ally across the river from us,” McCullough remembers. For the last several years, Compost Colo- rado had been trying to set up a home base in a former slaughterhouse in Globeville, but issues with the landlord and city zoning had tarnished that dream; McCullough’s call came at just the right time. “They were kind of inhibited with what they could do, and we had opportunity here,” McCullough says. “They were able to come over, handle all of our compost, and, in turn, we give them space.” Compost Colorado operates out of the maintenance and operations building for the National Western Stock Show, processing all of the National Western Center’s organic waste on site, as well as about 50 percent of the waste collected from other Compost Colorado members. National Western’s Big Sustainability Goals McCullough says the National Western Center is trying to weave sustainability into everything on the campus from the start, as ret- rofi tting sustainability into existing programs tends to be more diffi cult. The campus also has an ambient loop system that uses waste water to heat and cool buildings, which is the largest sewer-heat recovery system in the country. Campus plans include planting new trees, which compost can help with, and working with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to install an auto- mated sorting system for waste that crushes cans onsite. Offi cials want to service twelve different recycling streams on the campus with the goal of reaching an 80 percent diversion rate, as well. “We will be able to tell you where we pur- chase things from and where they all end up,” McCullough says. “Which is the story that a lot of people want to hear, that it didn’t just go into a bucket and then go off to a waste site.” Along with space at the National West- ern Center, Compost Colorado received $374,000 in grant funding from the CDPHE to develop the processing system on the campus. The two shipping containers use one-week and two-week cycles to transform a combination of coffee grounds, yard waste, wood chips and food waste into useable soil with mixing machines. After compost is done in the shipping con- tainer, the soil cures for a month. Compost Colorado screens to make sure everything is properly broken down and will toss any- thing that isn’t back in the machine for the next round. Unlike major compost processors, Com- post Colorado includes accepted composta- ble packaging and non-coated paper in the mix. Both A1 Organics and Waste Manage- ment, which have served as the city of Den- ver’s compost contractor at various times, stopped doing so, reducing the amount of items that Denver residents will compost. There are only fi fteen composting fa- cilities statewide. The Compost Colorado processing center is the fi rst within Denver city limits, but Denver may need more soon. Denver voters passed the Waste No More initiative by an overwhelming majority in November 2022. That measure will require all businesses, events and construction sites to recycle and compost, but the initiative has been delayed to at least 2026 as the city grapples with how to roll the program out fairly for small businesses. Concerns about a lack of processing centers and waste contrac- tors for the infl ux have also arisen. Compost Colorado and the National Western Center hope to show that localized composting infrastructure can be a solution to those problems. “This is a small footprint, and it’s able to manage a remarkable amount of waste and turn it into something resourceful and valuable for the community,” Kaplan adds. Composting food waste by city council district, neighborhood, event center or busi- ness district could be a solution to many problems the city currently faces with com- post, according to Kaplan. “We can’t treat organic material like recy- cling or trash,” he says. “We don’t produce it the same way. We don’t process it the same way, and we shouldn’t haul it the same way.” Compost Education Hub Even if this pilot isn’t repeated across the city, Kaplan and McCullough say the chance to showcase the process educationally may also help. “On top of the plans to create a model for a closed-loop waste systems and event centers and campuses, this is going to be an educa- tion hub,” Kaplan says. “This is going to be a place where you can learn about regenera- tive agriculture. Where you can learn about urban waste diversion and resource recovery, where we can start to repair our broken food system and our broken carbon cycle.” Locating the processing center in the Globeville neighborhood, which has histori- cally been one of the most polluted in the nation, is important, too. “This is ground zero for environmental injustice and the fact that there’s an initiative here to remediate and repair the land, even in the small ways that a small composting company operating out of this campus can do, it’s a cool opportunity, and it’s one we’re really excited to explore,” Kaplan says. Kaplan says Compost Colorado plans to offer free soil to Globeville residents and neighbors as well as pro-bono hauling ser- vices for events in the immediate area. Compost Colorado and the National West- ern Center have committed to donating at least 10 percent of the soil produced to the Globev- ille and Elyria-Swansea neighborhoods for soil restoration projects, with McCullough saying they may donate as much as 20 percent. Along with being donated to the com- munity and given to Compost Colorado members, composted soil will also be used for projects around the campus by organiza- tions like the Colorado State University Spur agriculture center, which may use the soil in research studies. Any excess will be sold. McCullough promises there’s more to come under the partnership, while Kaplan teases gar- den beds and other agricultural programming. “This is just the beginning,” Kaplan says. Email the author at catie.cheshire@westword. NEWS KEEP UP ON DENVER NEWS AT WESTWORD.COM/NEWS Soil created by the new composting process on the National Western Center campus. CATIE CHESHIRE
