• Served in the main ballroom.
• On the menu: TBD
• Greater Colorado Council meeting in the Church Ranch breakout room.

Welcome to Westminster, the home of Recycle Colorado's 2026 Summit for Recycling. Hear from members of the Westminster community who help make materials go round and round. You'll hear from members of Westminster's municipal sustainability team as well as some of their local partners like Scraps. Scraps will providing zero waste services for the Summit!

Kick off the Summit gaining some inspiration from Dr. Kelly Kandra Hughes. 

• Grab a beverage
• Fill up your water
• Hit the restroom
• Follow up with a speaker, exhibitor or attendee
• Locate your next session

Organics | Ballroom

Organics Diversion Dating Gameshow
Speakers: Eco-Cycle Team

Producer Responsibility | Church Ranch

Get caught up on Producer Responsibility for Packaging & Paper in Colorado
Speakers: Caroline Mitchell

10 years of PaintCare in Colorado

Reuse | Westcliff

Let’s get reuse and waste reduction ideas flowing!
Speakers: Ryan Call & Tara Sullivan

How can we as individuals, organizations, and RC as a whole support waste reduction and reuse systems in CO?

• Served in the Ballroom.
• On the Menu: TBD
• First 30 minutes of lunch: Enjoy your un-programmed networking time.
• Second 30 minutes: Exhibitor activity to get you up and energized for the rest of the day
• The Colorado Composting Council will be having lunch in the Church Ranch breakout room.

Organics | Ballroom

Processing & Contamination
Speakers: Nina Waysdorf, City & County of Denver - DOTI, Sampson Brozek, WM, Brian Loma, GreenLatinos, Angie Gilbert, University of Colorado - Boulder, Nikki Raichelson, Vanguard Renewables

Organics Diversion Programs & Case Studies
Speakers: Tay Dunklee, City & County of Denver, CASR, Jimena Baldino, City of Aspen, Rutger Myers, Eco-Cycle, Jamie Blanchard-Poling, Compost Queen, Meghan Ibach, Eco-Products (Moderator)

A Shared Mobile Compost Extractor For Eastern Colorado Farms
Speakers: Stu McFarland, High Plains Conservation District and Robbie Tepperberg, Auraria Sustainable Campus (Moderator)

High Plains Conservation District has developed a mobile compost extractor trailer, which will allow eastern Colorado agriculture producers the opportunity to experiment with compost products with applications such as replacing neonicotinoid seed treatments, reducing synthetic fertilizers, and improving the nutrient profile of agricultural products.

Producer Responsibility | Church Ranch

Implementation of Producer Responsibility
Speakers: Don Bates, Osprey Initiative, Christine Yeager, CSY Impact Consulting

As Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) shifts from legislation to real-world implementation, waste diversion professionals are being asked to do more: design new systems, stabilize workforces, justify costs, and prove impact. With experience at Circular Action Alliance, helping producers comply and service providers navigate the reimbursement process, CSY Impact Consulting will share how to meet these demands while running lean. Too often, sustainability conversations focus on materials and metrics without addressing the human systems underneath them.

Drawing on advisory work with Osprey and lived experience navigating burnout, risk, and reinvention, CSY Impact Consulting will explore how organizational health, workforce resilience, and system design are inseparable. Osprey’s work in rural and coastal markets across the southeast offers a powerful case study in what happens when innovation is driven not by abundance, but by constraints such as long distances, climate exposure, limited capital, and deep community accountability.

In a state with a 6% recycling rate, Osprey is delivering recycling services to events, venues, rural communities, and across swamps. They have scaled a model made successful in Mobile, Alabama, and each place they go is staffed by local, passionate employees looking to make a change in their communities.

This session will also examine how emerging EPR reimbursement frameworks can either reinforce fragile systems or unlock smarter, more humane models. If EPR is going to deliver recycling to each Coloradan as easily as their trash, then EPR needs to fund innovative approaches to expansion. This session will share how elevating environmental, social, and community impact metrics alongside tons collected can design recycling systems that last, because the people inside them can last.

What Happens After Approval? Launching Colorado’s First Material-Specific EPR Program
Speakers: Shelly Fuller & Kelly Duran, Interchange360

Colorado has already taken a bold step by approving an Independent Program Plan for lubricant and automotive packaging under its Extended Producer Responsibility law. That means this is no longer a policy experiment…it's a real program going live in March 2026.

By the time the Summit for Recycling gets underway, Interchange 360’s program will be three months into operations. That creates a rare opportunity to look behind the curtain at both sides of EPR implementation: the systems that move the material and the education that makes those systems work.

This session will walk attendees through Colorado’s first dedicated EPR pathway for lubricant packaging, focusing equally on operational launch and education and outreach, and what it takes to make a material-specific program succeed in the real world.

Reuse | Westcliff

From Policy to Pour or Reuse is not a cup problem
Speakers: Rachel Irons, Nude Foods, Hayden Van Andel, Sustainable Breck, Susan Fecko, Black Dog Studio Communications Agency, Meredith Katz, RSP, and Joey Baugh, Retrocycle (Moderator)

Panelists from reuse, municipal waste programs, and behavior change fields will share real-world examples of what slows adoption and what helps systems endure. The goal is to shift the conversation from “better products” to better systems that people can realistically sustain.

Food Service Provider Sustainability
Speakers: Brian Loma, GreenLatinos and Becky Goyton, City & County of Denver - CASR

Hear from the people behind Denver's successful reusable and food service producer sustainability programs. Larn from case studies from real restaurants who made the switch the resembles with the support of Denver's program and the Diversion Designers team. Hear how Food Trucks are even getting in on the game!

Organics | Ballroom

Lightning Round End Market Development
Speakers: Clinton Sander, A-1 Organics, Jonathan Whetstine, Timberline Rock n Roll, Liz Mauro, South Canyon Landfill, Sampson Brozek, WM, Noah Kaplan, 5280 Waste Solutions (Moderator)

Explore how compost application drives water retention, landscape resilience, and higher crop yields across Colorado and beyond. Hear rapid-fire insights from commercial compost facility experts on building living soils that support sustainable agriculture, conserve water, and strengthen landscapes in challenging climates.

Producer Responsibility | Church Ranch

Colorado's PRO, Circular Action Alliance, is Here to Support
Speakers: CAA Reporting Platform Specialists

Reuse | Westcliff

Designing Circular Operations That Support People and Scale Impact
Speakers: Kimberley Duarte

Reuse is one of the most powerful tools we have for reducing waste and strengthening local economies, yet many reuse, repair, and remanufacturing programs struggle to scale or sustain themselves over time. This session explores reuse through an operational lens, focusing on the systems, partnerships, and people that determine long-term success. Drawing from circular supply chain and operations experience, the session reframes reuse organizations as critical infrastructure within a circular economy and examines how logistics, material flow design, partnerships, and continuous improvement enable work to function in practice.

The goal is not perfection, but durability: reuse systems that are resilient, humane, and able to grow without exhausting the communities that run them.

• Buses will be parked outside the main entrance of the venue.
• Buses will have designated volunteers outside each entrance for you to find the tour you have selected to attend.
• If you would like to drive yourself (in case you prefer not to ride on the bus) please communicate with your tour leader. 

Organics

• Stop 1: DUG Garden + Food Forest
  • 800 Julian St, Denver, CO 80221
  • Visit the 48th & Julian Food Forest and DUG Community Garden to see a community orchard and thriving garden in action. This site is one of over 200+ growing spaces in Denver Urban Gardens’ vast network. Learn more about DUG’s three pillars, linking food, community, and climate resiliency to grow a more sustainable future for our neighbors.
• Stop 2: Compost Colorado
  • 5125 Race Ct, Denver, CO 80216
  • Fighting Climate Change and Restoring Soil on the Front Range with Compost Colorado. How much can a compost processing facility DO with a relatively small footprint in a city's urban core? Come find out at Denver's first commercial compost processing facility!
    Located just north of where the state's two major highways intersect with the South Platte River, in one of the metro area's most environmentally neglected neighborhoods, Compost Colorado shows that a small site can have a big impact. Come learn how these composters partnered with city agencies to provide organics diversion and free soil remediation to residents and businesses in central Denver. Discover the opportunities and challenges this type of distributed infrastructure creates, and how a site like this can act as an educational hub for city dwellers to learn and understand the importance and benefit of this essential practice. Come see how Coco's two in-vessel Earth Flow systems paired with extended ASP systems are helping CoCo find creative solutions for space constraints, contamination, odor challenges, compostable packaging, proximity to "waste" generators, and more! Get on the bus, take the ride, and come see what this pioneering scrappy crew is up to!
• Stop 3: We Don't Waste
  • 6090 E 39th Ave, Denver, CO 80207
  • We Don’t Waste is a Denver based food recovery nonprofit with the vision that food goes to people, not landfills, and is accessible to all! Our Food Recovery Hub in Denver is where we have our office, garage for our trucks, cooler, freezer, dry storage space, lobby, breakroom, classroom, and kitchen. On the tour you will get to see all of these components as well as the food we rescue, and the equipment we utilize to move food around including trucks, pallet jacks, and fork lifts. We will walk through our space, discuss our programming, and answer any question about how we recover and redistribute rescued food and divert waste from landfills.

Reclaim, Repair, Reuse

• Stop 1: Perks Reclaimed Warehouse
  • 6800-A E 53rd Pl, Commerce City, CO 80022
• Stop 2: Mile High Workshop
• Stop 3: Goodwill Outlet
  • 6850 Federal Blvd, Denver, CO 80221

Westmini Sustainability

• Stop 1: SustainAbility
  • 6020 W 91st Ave, Westminster, CO 80031
• Stop 2: Ridwell
  • 6300 Washington St, Denver, CO 80216

University of Colorado Boulder