The 7-Step URCO Multifamily Checklist for Denver Apartment Buildings

Denver requires compost and recycling at every apartment and condo community with 8 or more units. The city lists seven requirements, and the order you tackle them in matters, because doing them out of sequence is how buildings end up buying the wrong service.

For the full picture on who is covered and what Melly's handles, start with our multifamily compliance page.

Two of the six steps carry nearly all the lead time. Capacity and hauler coordination determine your timeline, and everything else moves fast once those are settled.

The short answer: Collection through a Denver-licensed hauler, labeled bins at every trash location, bilingual signage, resident education, adequate service capacity, a written Waste Diversion Plan on file, and records with annual reporting. Seven requirements, verified at license renewal.

Below is a checklist to become urco compliant for your multifamily building.

Step 1: Confirm your unit count and who is responsible

Count dwelling units. Eight or more inside Denver city limits means covered, whether the property is an apartment, condo, or mixed-use.

Count units, not buildings and not residents. Four twelve-unit buildings sharing one enclosure is a covered property. A nine-unit building with three vacancies is still nine units.

Two exemptions worth knowing. Townhomes and rowhomes on a Denver Solid Waste account are not covered. Neither is anything in Glendale, which is its own city and sits outside Denver's mandate entirely. If you run a portfolio, check each property against city limits rather than assuming the whole book is in or out.

Then settle who is responsible: owner, residential rental license holder, association, or the agent acting on their behalf, which usually means you. Confirm it in writing with ownership, because compliance is verified at license renewal and someone's name is on that license.

Step 2: Run your capacity math in gallons

Weekly service capacity is container size in gallons, multiplied by quantity, multiplied by collection frequency per week. The city defines capacity in gallons, not pounds.

Do this before you shop for service. You cannot evaluate a quote without knowing your requirement, and a hauler quoting in tons is measuring something else.

Two details that catch people. Interior containers your staff empty into a centralized collection point do not count toward this figure, so put them wherever they work operationally. And size to your peak week rather than your average, because move-in weekends and the holidays are exactly when a container sized for a normal Tuesday overflows.

Step 3: Contract a Denver-licensed hauler for compost and recycling

The hauler must be licensed by the City and County of Denver. Ask for the license and verify it.

Confirm the agreement actually covers compost and recycling, not just trash. Plenty of buildings have a long-standing trash contract and assume the other streams came with it. They did not.

This is your longest lead item. Negotiation, container delivery, and route scheduling commonly run two to six weeks together. Start here as soon as you have your gallons figure. Route density in your specific neighborhood predicts service reliability better than the rate does.

Step 4: Label bins at every trash location

Every container carries a label clearly identifying its stream, affixed and visible.

Every trash location means every trash location. Trash rooms, common areas, outdoor enclosures, loading docks, secondary collection points. Buildings routinely label the main trash room and miss the three collection points on other floors.

Step 5: Post compliant bilingual signage

Image-based signage listing accepted and prohibited materials, posted on or immediately adjacent to each container and visible at the point of disposal. English and Spanish at minimum, and if the primary language of your residents is another language, that language may be substituted for Spanish.

Signage has to match your receiving facility's acceptance spec rather than a generic template. A downloaded sign that says compostables accepted will contaminate your container on day one if your facility rejects serviceware.

Photograph it in place with dates once installed.

Step 6: Run resident education and keep the records

Sorting instructions distributed by a reasonable method: move-in cards, posters, digital notices through your tenant portal, common area posting. Keep records of what went out and when.

This is where multifamily differs from every other segment. In a restaurant you train staff once. In a 200-unit building you have hundreds of households who did not sign up for this and who turn over constantly. Sorting instructions need to live permanently in the move-in packet, or the program decays on the lease cycle.

If your accepted materials list changes, education goes back out within 30 days.

Step 7: File the Waste Diversion Plan and start annual reporting

A written Waste Diversion Plan on file, plus records retained and annual reporting submitted.

Denver has not published an official plan form, so the document you produce has to stand on its own. Cover applicability, responsible party, streams, container inventory and capacity in gallons, hauling arrangement, signage, education method, and recordkeeping. One plan per premises, not one per portfolio.

Retain weight tickets or service receipts for one year, available at license renewal or on request.

The ten-minute URCO multifamily checklist self audit

Eight questions. Any no is a gap.

1. Do residents have compost and recycling collection they can actually reach?

2. Is our hauler licensed by the City and County of Denver, and does the agreement cover all three streams?

3. Do we know our weekly capacity in gallons?

4. Do containers overflow between collections?

5. Is every container at every trash location labeled, with bilingual signage posted at the container?

6. Have residents received sorting instructions this year, with records of what went out?

7. Do we have a written Waste Diversion Plan for this specific property?

8. Could we produce a year of service records today?

What a gap costs

Denver Municipal Code section 48-47 sets the ladder at 150 dollars for a first citation, 500 for a second, and 999 for a third and each subsequent. Under section 1-13, each continuing day is a separate offense.

The practical enforcement mechanism is licensing. Compliance is verified at your first license renewal after September 1, 2026 and at every renewal after that.

GET YOUR FREE URCO COMPLIANCE ASSESSMENTTwelve questions. Two minutes. No cost, no obligation.

Melly's assesses your trash rooms and chutes, runs your capacity math, installs bilingual signage, builds resident education, and files your Waste Diversion Plan. Running a portfolio? Every property goes under one agreement with a single point of contact. More on multifamily.