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Today Boulder diverts less than half its waste from the landfill. Residences account for about 40% of the waste stream, and divert close to 2/3 of their waste to be composted and recycled. Businesses account for about 60% of the waste stream, and less than 1/3 of that waste is diverted, because most businesses do not have any recycling or composting service -- it all goes directly into the garbage. If we want to have any hope of meeting our zero waste plan goal (85% diversion by 2017) we are going to have to institute mandatory recycling and composting. The commercial sector isn't going to do it voluntarily. Some businesses (who shall remain nameless... for the moment) even go so far as to put out recycling/composting containers in their establishments to appease their customers environmental sensibilities, and then throw the separated materials into the trash at the end of the day. Recycling materials like aluminum, steel, and plastics is vastly more energy efficient than extracting virgin materials. Composting organics creates useful soil amendments and avoids landfill methane emissions. Our waste stream is a significant component of our climate impacts as a community. Landfilling isn't cheaper than recycling, the costs are just borne by society as a whole instead of the people and businesses throwing these resources away. We need to change that.