ERIE, Colorado – As Colorado takes action to reduce climate-warming pollution, the state hopes to have new regulations passed by next year to combat the methane released by our trash.

When it comes to air pollution, methane may not be as well known as carbon dioxide. But it is one of the most potent greenhouse gases, trapping about 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide.

“Methane also has immediate community impacts,” says Tom Frankiewicz, a landfill methane expert who leads the Rocky Mountain Institute’s Climate-Aligned Industries Program.

“Methane itself contributes to the formation of ground-level ozone or smog,” he said.

When landfills emit methane, it is often mixed with a “stew of emissions,” including dangerous air pollutants that can contribute to respiratory diseases such as asthma, Frankiewicz said.

Eric Goody, Denver7

Colorado’s roadmap for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, first created in 2021 and updated earlier this year, identified trash as one of the main sources.

“Reducing methane emissions from landfills, wastewater treatment plants and other sources, as well as stepping up efforts to reduce waste, recycle it and divert it, are necessary, particularly to meet post-2030 emissions targets,” the government report said.

The latest version of the roadmap instructs Colorado’s Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) to “develop and propose (Air Quality Control Commission) regulations that require enhanced monitoring, reporting, and collection requirements for waste disposal sites across the state.”

Soon, Frankiewicz will be working with Colorado to consider these new regulations. Later this month, CDPHE will bring together a group of experts. They will meet with officials from CDPHE’s Division of Air Pollution Control from August to November. They will then present recommendations to the Air Quality Control Commission in early 2025.

Their meetings are open to everyone. To join the Zoom meetings, you must register in advance using the links below:

You can also email comments to [email protected] with the subject line “Reducing Methane in Landfills.”

Frankiewicz, who formerly worked in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s climate change division, said Colorado is one of the states in the U.S. that is leading the way in regulating landfill pollution.

“The impacts and benefits are both global and local,” he said. And the possible solutions combine “high-tech and best practices.”

Drones, planes and satellites can detect huge methane clouds from the air and even from space, Frankiewicz said. At the landfills themselves, gas collection systems can capture methane and convert it into energy that energy companies can use.

“But that’s only half the solution,” said Frankiewicz. The main solution is to keep some of the waste out of landfills altogether.

“Once you put (your trash cans) outside for pickup, they’re kind of out of sight and out of mind,” Frankiewicz said. But “methane is created when organic waste, things like yard waste, food waste, even paper and cardboard,” decompose deep in landfills.

To prevent this, you can sort your garbage and recycle or compost it.

“You could actually compost them right in your garden,” said Frankiewicz. “Everyone gets their money’s worth.”

But Colorado residents like Broomfield City Councilwoman Laurie Anderson know it’s not always that simple. Anderson said Broomfield is still working on making recycling accessible to all residents, and composting services are not yet planned.

“We really need to be proactive as individuals and reduce waste,” she said.

However, new local and state regulations should create incentives and cost-cutting measures to make these more environmentally friendly waste disposal services cheaper and more accessible.

Anderson first became concerned about air pollution nearly a decade ago, when an oil and gas operator decided to drill in her Broomfield neighborhood. But through her work with the nonprofit Moms Clean Air Force, she said she realized that “we can’t just focus on one particular industry or one particular source. We have to consider them all,” including landfills.

Eric Goody, Denver7

In some neighborhoods, the landfill problem is more obvious — like the community of Erie, directly across from the Front Range landfill. Or in the predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhoods of the Denver metropolitan area, where municipal solid waste and Superfund sites are more concentrated, according to a mapping effort by the University of Colorado’s Boulder Environmental Center.

GreenLatinos, a nonprofit environmental organization, identified at least 10 landfills and recycling facilities in north Denver and Commerce City alone, including the Sand Creek Superfund site, where a landfill operated alongside other industrial operations and “contaminated soil, air, groundwater and surface water with dangerous chemicals.”

There are currently nearly 60 active landfills in Colorado. Only 20 of them are required to report their methane emissions under the state’s reporting thresholds. But Anderson hopes that new Colorado regulations will require reporting from all landfills.

“Even if you don’t live across the street, you see the impacts,” Anderson said. “The more proactive we can be now, the less burden there will be in the future, and that’s why it’s really important.”