Event Compliance
Denver requires a waste diversion plan for permitted events on public property. Melly's Recycling writes it, builds your signage, and gets it ready for your permit submission.
350 or more attendees a day puts your event in scope.
Twelve questions. Two minutes. Know exactly where your kitchen stands.
WHY THIS HITS YOU
Denver's Universal Recycling and Composting Ordinance, also called Waste No More, covers permitted events on public property drawing 350 or more attendees per day.
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Unlike a restaurant or a building, your compliance sits upstream of your permit. The plan has to be right before the event exists.
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Most organizers find this out during the permit process, with weeks to go and a vendor list already locked.
DOES THIS APPLY TO YOU
You have to comply if:
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Your event is on permitted public property inside Denver city limits
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It draws 350 or more attendees on any single day
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It is a festival, race, market, concert, block party, or similar permitted gathering
You are exempt if:
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Your event is entirely on private property
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Daily attendance stays under the 350 threshold
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​Your event is outside Denver city limits
WHAT THE CITY REQUIRES
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Compost and recycling through licensed hauler
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Containers at every disposal point
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Bilingual signage, English and Spanish minimum
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Enough service capacity
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Vendor requirements passed through
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Written Waste Diversion Plan, submitted with permit
Records and annual reporting
The hard part is you only get one shot.
Every attendee is a first-timer. You cannot train a crowd. A restaurant trains its line once and a building educates tenants at move-in, but your sorting has to work for ten thousand strangers who read a sign for two seconds while holding a beer.
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Your vendors are your liability. Every food truck and booth brings its own packaging, and the wrong serviceware in your compost stream gets the load rejected under your name, not theirs.
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There is no next week. A building that gets it wrong fixes it before the next pickup. An event that gets it wrong has already happened, and the documentation you submit is whatever actually occurred.
HOW MELLY'S HANDLES IT
We write your Waste Diversion Plan and prepare it for permit submission
We run your capacity math in gallons based on your attendance projection and event length
We design your station layout so containers sit where people actually finish their food
We build clear, bilingual signage sized to be read at a glance in a crowd
We give you vendor-facing requirements you can attach to your vendor agreements, so packaging rules are settled before load-in
We brief your staff and volunteers on the sort
We compile your post-event documentation
One event or a full season, we have you.
Run a restaurant group or a food hall and we set up every location under one agreement, with the same signage and one point of contact. One conversation covers all of them.
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Single spot, you still get the full setup with no big-hauler runaround.
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Melly's Recycling is Denver family-owned, and we handle the paperwork so you can stay focused on service.