Recycle Utah

Nonprofit Summit County, Utah Recycling Center

Thriving Community & Equity

Reducing Food Waste At Home

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Food waste has a large impact on climate. In the US, about 40% of food goes uneaten.  According to the Park City Community Foundation, “Roughly 80% of the solid waste that reaches our local landfill could be diverted, with up to 60% of that being food waste.”  At the current rate of use, the landfill in Park City has about 30 years left, making food waste reduction an important action for everyone.  Park City set a goal of having zero food waste in our landfill by 2030 – and it starts with you! Here are five ways you can reduce food waste at home.

  • Before grocery shopping, look through your fridge and have a plan.  Buy what is needed and keep it in mind when you plan to eat it.  Keep those quickly perishable items in a convenient spot in the fridge.
  • Store food strategically. Produce like tomatoes, bananas, apples, and avocados release ethylene gas that can cause other vegetables to spoil sooner, so they should be stored away from other produce. Treat herbs like flowers store them in a glass of water, and wash vegetables right before eating to avoid introducing moisture.
  • Purchase “ugly” food like a tomato with a soft spot or produce with a cosmetic imperfection. When food has blemishes, it will end up in the trash, but many are still perfectly good to eat. Cook “ugly” food right away, use it in smoothies, or freeze it to extend freshness.
  • Understand food dates. “Best by” dates indicate when the quality of the food starts to dip, but is likely still safe to eat.  Use your senses!  If it smells fine and looks fine, chances are it’s fine. 

Keep nutrients in the food cycle by composting. A worm bin is a great way to compost at home!  Vermicompost is a low-maintenance, mostly odorless option for recycling your vegetable waste.  Plus you get an extremely high-quality fertilizer for your garden.  If you live in Park City (84060 or 84098), you can sign up for curbside food waste pickup through Momentum Recycling, free for the first 1000 people who sign up through Park City Community Foundation’s Zero Waste program https://parkcitycf.org/zerofoodwaste/

By Brightie Huddleston, Summit Community Gardens – EATS

Sustaining Environmental Excellence: The Costs Behind Recycle Utah

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In the heart of Park City, nestled among the mountains, lies Recycle Utah, your local nonprofit organization dedicated to environmental conservation through recycling and education. Recycle Utah accepts and processes over 45 different types of materials, from plastics and metals to electronics and hazardous waste. Behind the scenes of this important community resource lies a complex web of costs and financial challenges crucial for its continued operation.

Recycling is wonderful and is hugely beneficial to the community in both economic and environmental terms.  But it isn’t free.  Recycle Utah spends over $750,000 annually to run its facility, manage its recycling programs, and educate the community on sustainability. To cover these costs, it relies on several revenue streams. Annually, Recycle Utah receives approximately $185,000 in grants from local governments and foundations.  It also receives revenue from the sale of recyclable materials, which in 2023 generated revenue of about $55,000. Interestingly, although Recycle Utah can sell many of the materials it collects, in most cases the shipping costs it incurs are more than the revenue it receives from material sales. For instance, shipping costs exceeded revenue from glass recycling by $28,000 in 2023.   Recycle Utah also receives revenue from its Warehouse, which last year contributed an additional $90,000 through sales of used items.  The balance of its revenue, and the backbone of Recycle Utah’s financial sustainability, is the community itself.  Through donations and fundraising events, the organization secures approximately $420,000 annually. 

As Recycle Utah continues its mission to promote sustainability and environmental responsibility, the need for ongoing community support remains paramount. By donating, participating in fundraising events, or simply spreading awareness about the organization’s initiatives, individuals and businesses alike can contribute to the long-term viability of this community resource. Recycle Utah is an example of our community’s dedication to sustainability and the beauty of our natural environment. Through a blend of public support, community partnerships, and dedicated leadership, Recycle Utah not only facilitates recycling but also fosters a culture of sustainability that resonates deeply within Park City and beyond. Consider supporting Recycle Utah in its mission to create a cleaner, greener future for generations to come by donating next time you visit the center, or visit recycleutah.com/donate.

By Chelsea Hafer

Pack and Act Green on Your Vacation

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When planning a more sustainable vacation, your choices extend past your transportation options; there are things you can do throughout every leg of your trip to make your vacation greener. Consider visiting more than one destination when traveling – combining trips saves fuel

and reduces carbon emissions. In their 2023 Sustainable Travel Report, Booking.com found that more than 75% of respondents want to make their vacations sustainable. However, almost 50% said barriers include the higher cost and perceived lack of sustainable options, and uncertainty of where to search for environmental and social equity stewardship opportunities. Sustainable travel doesn’t have to be hard! Here are a few tips to make your trip more green.

  • Bring a sturdy water bottle. At the airport, make sure it’s empty as you go through TSA, then fill it at a drinking fountain.
  • Bring wired headphones to use with airline entertainment systems so you won’t need to use new disposable ones.
  • Bring your reusable shopping bags.
  • Pack shampoo and soap bars in small reusable containers.
  • Purchase sunscreen that doesn’t contain chemicals that harm water and coral quality. Research shows regular commercial sunscreens can bleach coral.
  • Pack common reusable items like cutlery, small containers, cloth napkins, and snack bags.
  • Pack light—leave the extra weight at home and you’ll travel easier and with better fuel efficiency.

Your eco-friendly behaviors travel with you! Turn off lights, and turn down heat and air-conditioning when you leave your lodging. Refuse styrofoam cups and plates and use your own reusable ones instead. Find and use recycling bins to dispose of plastic and paper items. At restaurants, skip the glass of water that’s offered unless you want it, and be aware of your food waste. Ask if you can share a serving, or order a variety of items and you’ll get to try more local dishes.

When it comes to activities, consider renting bikes to travel locally and look for local walking tours instead of riding a tour bus. Public transit is also a great way to explore a new city! Visit protected lands and waterways. Stay on trails, and observe – not interact with – wildlife. If you think to carry a bag to pick up litter, visitors can enjoy cleaner and more beautiful sites and reduce pollution. Educate others about your top eco-friendly travel tips! This includes letting managers in resort businesses know what they can do to increase the sustainability of their operations. Let them know that doing so will increase customer satisfaction. Even when you’re out of town, you can have an impact spreading sustainable tourism wherever you are!

By Bev Harrison

Empowering the Next Generation: How to Talk to Kids About Climate Change

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As a kid, I don’t remember getting much of a formal environmental education. My “environmental education” came from my experiences hiking and skiing, gaping over miles of mountains, or kneeling on the ground, peering at rocks and bugs. These experiences filled my heart with a deep love for this world from an early age, and when I went to college, it seemed a natural choice to study the environment. Within a semester, I was experiencing the most profound form of heartbreak I can imagine. My despair weighed on me so heavily that I almost decided to change my course of study. I went to my faculty advisor, asking how I could possibly go into the future hoping to make change when there was so much information that makes our future look hopeless. He described a spectrum, with hope on one side and fear on the other. If we lie too far on the side of hope, we become complacent and fail to take action. If we are far on the side of fear, we become paralyzed and deem any action to be fruitless. We must try to balance ourselves solidly in the middle. 

At Recycle Utah, we aren’t hiding the urgency of our situation from our students. We teach about our landfill filling up, about our decreased snowfall, and about growing air pollution. But we also finish every lesson with solutions, with hope. What can you do? What are other people doing? It’s important that kids can identify what they’re seeing in real life, but also know how to take action, and that there are solutions to our environmental issues. That they have agency, even if they aren’t an adult yet. If I had this kind of education growing up, I doubt I would have experienced the shock and despair that I did in my first semester of college. I would have known that yes, our world is in crisis, but that there are things we can do, things that can help turn the situation around. 

So, what can you do, as a parent or an educator, to prepare little ones for a life in a changing world? Take your kids outside. Point out changes in precipitation and temperature; try to help them notice changes in patterns. If they are older, ask them what they think this might mean. Let them learn from their senses and really get to know the world around them. And then infuse their world with hope. Look for good news, for stories that exhibit people taking action in the face of climate change. Stories of people thinking creatively, people thinking outside the box, and people taking small action to change their immediate environment. Look for local action that you can take to change your small piece of the world, a change that kids can notice. Prepare them for what they will inevitably see as they grow up. Prepare them to think creatively and to act with responsibility and care for their home. When I think about the hope and fear spectrum, the biggest beacon of hope I see every day is in kids. If we prepare them for their future on our changing planet, then I truly believe that we can all create a world we are proud to call ours.

By Chelsea Hafer

The Footprint of Online Returns

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Oh, the joy and convenience of typing a few keys in search of that perfect jacket, punching purchase, and having it arrive on your doorstep three days later. There are environmental pros and cons to both online and in-store purchases depending on one’s consumerism knowledge and awareness. The clencher is timing; our societal ‘now’ mindset wants items the next day after purchasing, which means the product could be transported by airplane or in a partially full truck. Can it wait? Also, can multiple items be purchased from the same supplier to minimize packaging and trips? Choosing slower shipping options not only saves money but also allows for retailers to have more time to plan and consolidate deliveries.

Then, there are the returns. Customers return at least 30% of clothing purchased online resulting in millions of tons of carbon emissions per year. Finally, the waste. About one in four returned goods is landfilled, possibly due to out of season styles. So, what is the best way to reduce returns from online shopping? So, how can you best reduce your returns when shopping online?

  1. Does the item have complete product information including customer reviews?
  2. Could retailers offer a discount on items that aren’t returned?
  3. Do retailers resell, donate, repurpose, or recycle returned clothes? Learn before you buy and find out how returns are handled.
  4. Are there local options for your desired online product?
  5. Do not purchase multiple sizes online knowing that a return is inevitable.
  6. Double check your ‘cart’ for size, color, etc. before purchasing.

In conclusion, knowing that we’re all drawn to online convenience, I’m still a fan of buying locally to support our businesses and save on packaging. Returns are less likely with in-store purchases. Research reveals only 9% of items are returned from in-store purchases versus 30% online. Let’s be mindful about how we buy things by consolidating errands and shopping to reduce car trips. The pandemic may have exacerbated online purchases, but there’s no reason we can’t tweak our buying behavior and reverse the trend.

By Mary Closser

Learning from Our Green Businesses

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In 2016, Recycle Utah initiated the Green Business Program providing free support to companies that are committed to undertaking specific sustainable operations actions. In 2022, they partnered with Park City Municipal, Summit County, and the Park City Chamber of Commerce enabling the program to become more rigorous with additional requirements, resources, and recognition for members. Currently 51 businesses participate and each has selected actions to undertake from 5 categories: energy efficiency, water conservation, materials management, transportation, and social equity. Depending on the number of actions businesses commit to, they move within the program from entry level green circle, to intermediate blue square, to the most aggressive black diamond level.

At January’s Green Drinks annual awards event, winning green businesses were recognized for their commitment to and success operating more sustainably. We can learn from their actions.

Park City Mountain Resort, performing at the highest black diamond level, is the 2023 Green Business of the Year. Perhaps the most noticeable of their sustainability initiatives is their waste diversion operation. Restaurant guests take their food trays to sorting stations and staff sort it into compostables, recyclables, soft plastic wraps and snack wrappers. This system keeps contamination from improper sorting to a minimum. There are trash, recycling, and snack wrapper cans for guests to use outside. Last year, Park City Mountain diverted a whopping 546 tons of waste from the landfill with 185 tons of it being food waste! To work, it takes our cooperation.

Abode Luxury Rentals won the Zest for Zero award which recognizes a company that has made fast progress entering the program. As they have done in their properties, their eco-friendly suggestions include reducing their heat to 55 degrees in unoccupied home; eliminating bottled water and liquid soap pump bottles; using timed aerated faucets; using dissolvable laundry detergent sheets; following local no-idling regulations; providing guests recycling bins and recycling guidelines; utilizing transit schedules and maps.

fulFILLed Lifestyle Co., another highest-level performer, won the People’s Choice Award. It is a zero waste and refill store located at the Outlets Park City. Their suggestions? Eliminate packaging by buying eco-friendly personal care and house cleaning products in containers you reuse and refill, and skip taking bags for your purchases!

By Bev Harrison