Zero Waste Diversion Data Dashboard

Every building, product and material has a story before it becomes waste. In Boulder, we’re working to keep more of those materials in use for longer, from recovering building materials during deconstruction to recycling and composting materials from homes and businesses.

Keeping materials in use can conserve natural resources, reduce waste and avoid some of the environmental impacts associated with producing new materials.

These dashboards show what that work looks like in practice.

Explore how much material Boulder is keeping out of the landfill, what happens to materials recovered from buildings and how our community is making progress toward a more circular economy.

Explore the data

Sustainable Deconstruction

What happens when a building is taken apart instead of demolished? Explore materials recovered through Boulder's deconstruction ordinance in the dashboard below. You’ll see where those materials go and the environmental benefits of keeping them in use.

Zero Waste Diversion

How much of Boulder's waste is diverted from the landfill? Explore trends in recycling, composting and reuse and see how we're progressing toward our zero waste goals and where that waste actually goes.

“The greenest building is the one that’s already built." - Carl Elefante

Keeping buildings in use preserves the materials and resources already invested in them. Renovating and adapting existing buildings can often be more sustainable than tearing them down and building new ones.

When a building does need to come down, deconstruction helps keep that same principle in mind: not wasting what can still be used so that materials and building components can be recovered for reuse or recycling rather than sent to a landfill. Because a building is more than the structure we see. It's also a collection of materials that can have value long after the building itself is gone.

Globally, buildings account for 40% of global raw material use, and 11% of annual climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions come from what we call ‘embodied carbon’ associated with buildings: the emissions from extracting, manufacturing, transporting, constructing and disposing of building materials. Locally, efforts like sustainable deconstruction and historic preservation recognize that our existing buildings and materials already hold significant value. By keeping buildings and materials in use longer, we can preserve that value while reducing the need for new resources and avoiding the emissions associated with replacing them.

That means what happens to a building's materials matters not just while the building is in use, but throughout its entire life cycle, and beyond.

Boulder's Sustainable Deconstruction requirements help support a growing marketplace for recovered building materials by directing valuable resources toward reuse and recycling rather than disposal.

The Sustainable Deconstruction Dashboard offers a new window into that system by showing where materials go after they leave a building and how our requirements help support and shape the local network of businesses, organizations and infrastructure that keep them in use.

Deconstruction is more than a waste management strategy. It helps grow a more circular economy, where building materials are recovered, processed and kept in use rather than thrown away.

The dashboard invites you to consider a building not simply as something that is built, used and eventually demolished, but as a collection of materials with value beyond the life of the building.

Scroll down and explore the dashboard to see what Boulder is recovering and where those materials go next.

How much of Boulder’s waste are we keeping out of the landfill?

Recycling and composting are familiar parts of everyday life, but they are only part of the bigger picture of how Boulder manages materials.

The Zero Waste Diversion Dashboard shows how much material from across the community is diverted from the landfill through recycling, composting and reuse efforts. It also shows how diversion has changed over time and how Boulder is progressing toward its zero waste goals.

The dashboard includes two measures of diversion.

Annual Waste Diversion: includes major waste streams across the community, including curbside collection, construction and demolition materials, drop-off facilities and reuse programs.

Curbside Collection Diversion: focuses on regularly collected residential and commercial trash, recycling and compost.

Because waste streams and reporting methods can change over time, diversion rates may vary from year to year as data collection improves.

Boulder has a long-term goal of achieving an 85% waste diversion rate. City Council adopted the Zero Waste Resolution and Strategic Plan in 2006.