It’s election season. Which means Colorado voters have big decisions to make on their 2022 ballot.
Municipal elections, and ballot measures are often overlooked by the flashier statewide campaigns.
However, your local elections can have a bigger impact on your life than what happens at the state level.
This year, Denver voters have a lot to consider, including whether to implement San Francisco-style recycling requirements.
In this article, Karl Honegger exposes the problems with Intitative 306, and the devastating impact it would have on new construction, multi-family renters, and events held in Denver.
Karl Honegger’s article was previously published in the Cherry Creek Chronicle’s September print edition, and is shared here for your consideration.
Please leave a comment below to let Karl know what you think!
No on Denver Recycling 306 by Karl Honegger
Denver residents will get to vote this November on ballot question 306 which is being called the Waste No More Initiative. Voters should reject this mandate as it distorts the local economy to appease those who hate landfills.
If passed, this initiative would impact Denver in three ways.
First, it would force apartment complexes and businesses (including hospitals, restaurants, hotels, and sporting arenas) to provide recycling and compost pick up services.
Second, it would target all special events by forcing them to provide appropriate containers for “separation of recyclables, organic material, and trash convenient for the employees, contractors, and customers” and require a “waste management plan, and staff and volunteer training to be reviewed by the Office of Special Events”
Third, it would also require construction and demolition companies to “separate and recycle, at a minimum, all readily-recyclable concrete, asphalt, clean wood, scrap metal and corrugated cardboard. Other materials may be added to this list by the [Denver] Department of Transportation and Infrastructure.” Anyone trying to get a “demolition permit must have a recycling and reuse plan approved by the [Denver] Department of Transportation and Infrastructure”
These requirements are all being done in the name of “Zero Waste” which is a goal for society to have zero waste going into landfills.
I’ve written on how authoritarian zero waste mandates are and how expensive they are for consumers, but unfortunately it looks like the environmental activists are chomping at the bit to turn Colorado into a version of San Francisco.
I will tackle the first part of the mandate as it puts unnecessary burdens on apartment complexes and those who live in multi-family housing.
As the Apartment Association of Metro Denver points out, this would end up creating fees for renters who want to live in multifamily housing. There is also no way it would be economically feasible for multifamily communities to install recycling and composting chutes. In addition, at least 80% of Denver’s multifamily rental properties offer recycling, but many residents don’t want to pay for the extra service.
Mandating the service is a cost Denverites can’t afford with inflation reaching 14% in Colorado.
The second part of the mandate is a waste of human resources. I took some of my kids in December to ski at Breckenridge. After eating lunch, I went looking for the trash area. I was expecting to find a trash bin, recycling bin and compost bin. Instead, they were blocked off and there were two employees who took my trash and separated it for me. This was quite an expensive way to ensure trash made it into the right bin. But this comes from the zero waste to landfill by 2030 pledge that Vail Resorts has committed to. Looking on the Vail Resort job board earlier this year, I found they were willing to pay up to about $41,000 a year with health benefits, paid time off and 401(k) for someone to “oversee receiving, proper storage, and disposal of all universal and hazardous waste…”
So, the Waste No More ballot question would require a similar setup where every special event in Denver would have to require paid employees (nobody is going to volunteer) to stand near waste receptacles so you don’t throw something into the wrong bin.
This is a waste of money and resources and will make every special event in Denver that much more expensive.
The third part of the ballot question is where the trash-Nazi’s hope to get their biggest numbers from. This is due to the focus on construction debris. As I have pointed out previously, “recycling” of construction materials enabled the City of San Francisco to claim that they had made significant progress towards their Zero Waste goals due to the way that landfill diversion rates are measured by weight. So if Denver keeps building new housing and offices, our progressive friends can use the heavy concrete recycling to claim they have made progress towards their environmental goals.
But the price of building will go up.
So, while the three parts of Question 306 will increase the cost of living in Denver, advocates try to claim they support the free market that by expanding the amount of recycling and composting that a city does it will result in additional jobs. They believe that “one ton of recycling materials provides nine times more jobs than one ton of trash”
For decades we’ve been told that increased recycling always leads to “More Jobs, Less Pollution”.
This basic premise fails to see the hidden cost of spending more money on composting and recycling.
Government can certainly use a mandate to foster job growth in industries that are currently fashionable. But governments can’t create wealth but rather redistribute it. For every “green job” created by government mandate there will always be one (or more) jobs destroyed.
The question isn’t whether Question 306 will lead to diverting recyclable materials away from landfills.
The question is if a mandate is a just and fair means towards that end?
It seems obvious that the answer is no.
The reality of recycling jobs is also important to consider. A former director of the Don’t Waste LA campaign argued that “People only hear about the feel-good aspects of recycling and zero waste, and rarely do they hear about the other side.”
Investigative reporter Brian Joseph claims that “Recycling workers, by virtue of their immigration status or status as temps, often hesitate to speak up when they see hazards on the job or are victimized by the outright illegal behavior of their supervisors…At scrapyards and sorting plants, at least 313 recycling workers have been killed on the job from 2003 to 2014…”
Claims of job creation through government mandate are not as rosy as they say. Jobs should be created through the growth of the free market not through government moving jobs from one sector into recycling.
Denver mandating composting and recycling points to the problems with Eco-progressives. They don’t believe that people should have the choice to pay less for life, whether it’s inexpensive trash services or a new apartment building. They constantly want Denver to become more like San Francisco, but what that really means is they want more control over your life so they can feel better about theirs. These latte sipping liberals aren’t interested in getting their hands dirty solving the problems they see in the world with free market solutions.
They want you to pay for their ideas because they can’t convince enough of the poor and middle class to embrace them.
The Eco-tyranny must stop. Vote no on 306.
Check out the No on 306 Facebook Page
This article originally appeared in the September print edition of the Cherry Creek Chronicle
Karl Honegger is a certified treasury professional and is on the Emerging Leaders Alumni Board with the Steamboat Institute. He is a board member of the Colorado Union of Taxpayers. Karl works in Denver for a healthcare company.
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