Colorado
What the drought did to our mulch line
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Mulch is the bottom of our waste hierarchy and about three per cent of throughput. For two summers it was the product we could not make fast enough.
Colorado's relationship with water is not a seasonal story, it is a structural one. When Denver Water and the surrounding districts tightened outdoor watering rules, a large number of households and commercial landscapers made the same calculation at roughly the same time: less lawn, more bed, and mulch to keep what water there is in the soil.
What mulch actually does
Three inches of wood mulch over a planted bed reduces evaporative loss from the soil surface by somewhere between 25 and 50 per cent depending on exposure, and moderates soil temperature swings that stress roots in the Front Range's brutal diurnal range. In a xeriscape, it is not decorative — it is the water strategy.
| Year | Volume | Average price / yd³ | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 100 | $19 | Normal year, mostly landscapers |
| 2022 | 138 | $21 | First restriction summer |
| 2023 | 176 | $24 | Waiting list from May to July |
| 2024 (to date) | 168 | $24 | Supply-constrained, not demand-constrained |
The constraint is upstream, and it is a good problem
Here is the awkward and rather pleasing thing: we cannot make more mulch without destroying more pallets, and destroying more pallets is exactly what the rest of the business exists to avoid.
Our fibre percentage has fallen from 9% of intake in 2014 to 3% today because we got better at repair and remanufacture. Every improvement upstream reduces the feedstock for the product with a waiting list. We are not going to reverse that, and we have turned down volume rather than do so.
We will not grind a repairable pallet to meet a mulch order. That sentence has cost us real money and it is the most important rule in the yard.
What we did instead
- Brought in clean off-cuts from the crating shop. Our own workshop produces trim that has no other use. It is a modest but genuinely additional stream.
- Improved screening rather than volume. Better separation of playground fibre, landscape grade and bedding raised the average value per cubic yard without grinding another pallet.
- Introduced colour. Iron-oxide brown and black and a cedar-red. Same wood, higher value, and it meets an aesthetic expectation the landscape trade genuinely has.
- Started allocating. Standing landscape customers get first call in the May to July window. New enquiries in June get an honest answer about the wait.
What we tell landscapers
- Order in March. Supply is unconstrained in late winter and the price is better.
- 3 inches in shade, 4 in full sun on the south side of a building. Coverage charts written for the midwest under-specify for Colorado.
- One cubic yard covers about 100 sq ft at 3 inches. Multiply by 1.15 for waste and settling.
- Keep it off the stems. Mulch volcanoes around trunks cause rot; a 3-inch gap around the stem prevents it.
- Natural grade for edible beds. There is no reason to put pigment in a vegetable patch, even a harmless one.
The larger point is one I did not expect to make when I started writing our sustainability reporting: a drought in a semi-arid state turned the least valuable output of a pallet yard into a small but genuine part of the region's water strategy. Circular systems connect to things you did not plan for.