Aspen, Colorado | C&D Waste Audit

Aspen, Colorado | Construction & Demolition Waste Audit

Construction and Demolition (C&D) debris management can be a considerable challenge for communities with limited landfill space and/or concerns about methane production in their landfill.  Much of C&D debris is often bulky, heavy, and most importantly can be diverted from the landfill to be recycled or repurposed. The city of Aspen has taken this challenge head-on. 

In January 2022, the Aspen City Council set a Science Based Target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 63% by 2030 and net zero by 2050. They also set waste reduction targets to reduce organic material going to landfill by 25% by 2025 and 100% by 2050, and a reduction of all waste going to the landfill by 70% by 2050. While a typical landfill fee approach is to weigh the items going into a landfill, Aspen wanted to better calculate fees based on the environmental impact of C&D materials that should be diverted, but arrive at the landfill unsorted. Using a dataset of Embodied Carbon for materials and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Social Cost of Carbon, Lotus quantified the present cost of future environmental damage from the material’s life cycle of extraction, production, transportation, and ultimately disposal.  Aspen is currently in the process of applying this metric to C&D debris that originates within the City of Aspen.