Recycle Utah

Nonprofit Summit County, Utah Recycling Center

Sustainable Materials

Reducing Microplastics In Your Diet

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Plastic has become a central part of our everyday lives, especially in our kitchens, fragmenting on a daily basis and ending up in the food we eat. Though various plastics can be recycled at Recycle Utah, we encourage you to limit your everyday use of plastic in order to make a positive impact on the environment and your personal health.

Did you know that microplastics, which are tiny plastic particles less than 5 millimeters in size, are now being found in our brains? A recent study of brain samples found that an average of 0.5% of our brains are made up of plastic by weight. Samples from dementia patients contained 10 times this amount on average. This raises serious concerns about our long-term health as we become more and more reliant on plastics.

The good news is that we can all reduce our exposure to microplastics. Try to avoid foods served in styrofoam containers, as well as items packaged in clear plastic bags or food wraps like those used for bread and produce. In doing this, you can avoid the two main culprits that infiltrate our bodies, polystyrene and polyethylene. Additionally, consider reducing your plastic use in the kitchen by switching to glass, metal, or wood cookware and containers.

By Elsa Kerr

Sustainable Coffee

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We crave the flavor and aroma. The taste brings us joy and for some, relief. Yet, there’s a story behind the 146 billion cups of coffee a year that Americans often celebrate in our morning routine. Just how sustainable is the bean that goes into that daily cup of joe? How and where did it grow, get harvested, processed, and roasted? Coffee is now grown in more than 50 countries, with Brazil being the world’s largest producer. Our desire to caffeinate involves many steps before it lands in our mug; the coffee industry, like any other, has environmental and social impacts.

First, how was the crop managed? Was the soil protected with minimal water use? Was it “shade-grown” on a farm featuring an array of native trees creating a canopy over the coffee bushes? This boosts biodiversity, decreases soil erosion, and acts as a carbon sink. Was the bean waste composted and used as a fertilizer?

Second, how are the farmers treated? Is social justice instilled to promote fair wages, humane conditions for employees, gender equality, and education access for children?

Third, is the coffee organic? USDA Organic certification bans the use of synthetic pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers, in addition to requiring farmers to use methods that prevent soil erosion.

Look for the following certifications when purchasing coffee: Fair Trade or Rainforest Alliance, B Corp, Shade Grown, Carbon Neutral, or Organic. Beyond the bean itself, other sustainable tidbits include:

1. Is the coffee light, medium, or dark roasted? Current research reveals that because light-roasted beans are roasted at lower temperatures and for less time, they are a better environmental choice (and may also contain more caffeine!)
2. How is your coffee packaged? Is the packaging reusable, recyclable, or compostable?
3. If you use pods, are they reusable vs. single-serve? The same goes for sugar and cream.
4. Are you composting your grounds and filters, if used?
5. How sustainable (and healthy) are your add-ins? Locally sourced? Organic? Dairy-free?

I hope these guidelines help to enrich your next cup of joe to complete satisfaction.

By Mary Closser

Sustainable Chocolate

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All food has an impact on the environment – some more than others. Have you ever thought
about our cherished chocolate? Sadly, it’s up there with meat and cheese in regards to carbon
impact. The more we educate ourselves about how to buy sustainably, the smaller the
environmental and ethical footprint we will leave.


Cocoa, or cacao, is the key ingredient in chocolate with 70% of it grown in West Africa, as well
as to Central and South America. Five million tons of cacao annually results in $100 billion in
global retail sales for this adored and sacred human treat. Other critical ingredients in chocolate are milk, sugar, and soy or sunflower lecithin.

What makes chocolate sustainable? It depends on how it was farmed. Particularly in West
Africa, cacao trees are grown on small farms run by individual families who cultivate, harvest,
ferment and dry the cacao beans. The equality of farmers considering child labor, fair pay,
discrimination, gender equality, and general assistance for better livelihoods is critical.
Greenhouse gas emissions primarily come from producing cocoa, milk, and sugar, all requiring land, resulting in deforestation. Milk requires water-intensive plants to feed land-intensive cows. Newer sustainable farming methods including shade trees, groundcover plants, hill or terrace planting to avoid soil erosion, rainwater storage, little or no pesticide use, agroforestry, and biodiversity. Such farming methods can also be more resilient to extreme drought and floods, enhanced by climate change. Transparent and reliable supply chains are also important.

While sometimes more expensive, look for “Fair Trade” and “Rainforest Alliance” certified
chocolate. Organic assures a chemical-free treat and buying local helps the footprint. Support
brands, manufacturers and retailers committed to the issues. Read labels and learn about the
company. Try different flavors! Then, stay tuned next for what to look for with sustainable
coffee options.

The 500-Year Problem We Can’t Ignore: The Lifespan of Plastics

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Plastic is everywhere, revolutionizing our lives with its convenience and durability. Yet, its
environmental cost is steep. Most people don’t fully grasp its long-term impact on the planet.
Plastics take between 20 and 500 years to break down, depending on the type of material and
its exposure to sunlight. Plastics never biodegrade; instead, they photodegrade when exposed
to UV radiation, breaking down into smaller and smaller plastics. Therefore, plastics buried in
landfills or deep in the ocean can last for centuries, or even millennia.


Plastic bags, made from HDPE, LDPE, or LLDPE, take about 20 years to decompose. Despite
this relatively short time, the massive volume of plastic bags used globally creates significant
pollution. Plastic bottles, primarily made from PET, take around 450 years to decompose. While recyclable, many bottles end up in landfills and oceans, breaking down into microplastics. These microplastics infiltrate ecosystems and human bodies, posing unknown health risks.


Because of plastic’s durability, almost every piece of plastic ever made still exists. Scientists
have found microplastics in every ecosystem on the planet. Plastic waste harms wildlife,
ecosystems, and human health. Much of the plastic problem is hidden, with microplastics
shedding from synthetic clothing and car tires, complicating pollution control.
Addressing the plastic crisis requires actions from governments, corporations, and individuals.


You may have heard of the 3 R’s: reduce, reuse, recycle. Responding to the plastic crisis begins
before you buy. Start by refusing single-use plastics. Reduce your consumption of products in
plastic packaging. Reuse containers and bags when you can. Repair your items to extend their
lifespan. Recycle all plastics! Hard plastics can be recycled in your curbside bin, and soft
plastics can be recycled at Smith’s, Walmart, or Recycle Utah.


Recycling alone isn’t enough; most plastic can only be recycled once or twice. We need to
reduce plastic use and find sustainable alternatives. Plastic has changed our world but
demands action to address its long-term impacts. By making small changes, we can help create a future with less plastic waste and a healthier planet.

By Chelsea Hafer

Republic/Waste Management Curbside Recycling Clarifications

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In July, we reviewed curbside recycling guidelines in a Green Tip. Everything in our curbside
recycling bin gets trucked to a huge Waste Management Materials Reprocessing Center in Salt
Lake, where it is dumped onto the tipping floor with tons of other recyclables and non-recyclable. contaminants. So begins its journey through a sophisticated network of conveyor belts and increasingly precise sorting machines until the different recyclable streams are pure, and can be compacted and baled to be shipped to factories and paper mills to make new products.

To make sure your curbside recycling stream is clean, follow these clarifications from Waste
Management and Republic Services. No waxy-coated paper take-out cups. No wax paper,
butcher or freezer paper. The waxy waterproofing is extremely difficult to extract from the paper pulping process and can ruin batches of paper at the mills. Recycle clean take-out plastic cups with their lids on. Coated cardboard milk or juice cartons are accepted.
Do not put anything smaller than a credit card in your bin. These items tend to fall through
screens and be improperly sorted. This is why lids need to be put on clean, dry containers. This also means no shredded paper. If you shred paper, it must be secured in a paper bag before it can go into the bin. Alternatively, use the paper shredder at Recycle Utah. All loose shredded paper needs to be put in their shredded paper dumpster there.


Hard plastics like plastic toys, household items, shelves, flower pots are not recyclable. Clean
balled-up (larger than credit card) aluminum foil is okay. No metal strapping or other metal
items. Tear off greasy parts of pizza boxes. No wet paper or cardboard. If a recycling bin
becomes uncovered during inclement weather and collects water or snow in it, it must
be emptied and dried.

Obviously, we play a crucial role in this planet-saving process. Successful recycling to
you!

By Bev Harrison

What to Do With Hard-to-Recycle Items

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Have you noticed a line-up of yellow buckets on a bench outside Recycle Utah’s office? They are there for us to recycle all sorts of hard-to-recycle items. There is one bucket for dropping off oral care products—dental floss containers, floss sticks, toothbrushes, and empty toothpaste tubes. In other buckets, you can drop off contact lenses, PFAS ski wax and Brita water filters. Another is for cell phones, iPods, tablets, and remote controllers. There is one for products that contain mercury—thermometers, smoke detectors, and blood pressure gauges. There’s a bucket for CDs and DVDs, and a few for different types of batteries. There’s even a bucket for tennis balls for our dogs! Ask staff if you have any questions about recycling hard-to-recycle items.

Recycle Utah sends their collected oral care recyclables to TerraCycle, a company headquartered in New Jersey, that coordinates their reprocessing into different materials and products. By doing this with an ever-growing number of recyclables, TerraCycle and their global partners keep trash out of landfills or from incineration. 

Park City Mountain started a snack wrapper recycling program with TerraCycle in FY2021. With funding support from Frito Lay/PepsiCo they collect wrappers during the winter season in their on-mountain restaurants. These are shipped to TerraCycle and a third party uses the material to manufacture outdoor furniture. Check out the deck furniture at Park City Mountain’s Summit House and Canyons’ Sun Lodge, made out of recycled snack wrappers! All wrappers are recycled in kitchen areas by trained staff as contamination from food waste and non-recyclables is too high when guests sort in public-facing bins. During the busy winter months, Park City has shipped out 2-3 mega-bags each month. According to Erin Fulmore, Sustainability Coordinator for PCMR, in FY2024, they recycled 1.51 tons of wrappers. Erin guessed this is the equivalent of 3 full-grown walruses! Given the average weight of a wrapper is 1 gram, that’s about 1,369,848 individual wrappers.

Don’t get stuck thinking you don’t need to recycle your small hard-to-recycle things because they’ll never amount to any significant diversion from the landfill. Think about PCMR’s snack wrapper outdoor furniture before you decide your little trash items will never be put to good re-use. 

By Bev Harrison