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Recycle Utah recently toured the WM Salt Lake Materials Recovery Facility (MRF), where we learned about updated rules for curbside recycling. WM’s MRF and transfer station in West Valley City accepts both curbside and commercial recycling for sorting and distribution, including Summit County’s curbside recycling.

The 50,000 square foot MRF and transfer station has been in operation since 2020 and is full of state-of-the-art recycling technology. Through the use of optical and AI sorters, WM can process around 450 tons of material every day, equivalent to the weight of about 50 orcas. 

Material travels through many steps as it moves through the facility. First, trucks drop all the recycling on the tipping floor to be dumped onto the conveyor belt system. Next, employees pull large non-recyclables or hazardous materials off the conveyor belt to avoid damage to the system. Employees primarily remove bagged material and large contaminants that could get twisted in the conveyor belts.

 The material passes over 3.5 miles of conveyor belts and sorting equipment. Aluminum cans are pulled off the conveyor by an ‘eddy current’, which works as a sort of reverse magnet. Steel cans and ferrous metal are pulled off the conveyor with a magnet. Paper, plastic, and cardboard are sorted using AI optical sorters. These machines use optical cameras to sense density and material on the conveyor. They can “see” whatever density they are programmed to look for, and use air jets to shoot the material off the main belt and into a separate line. Optical sorters are programmed to pick about 600 different materials per minute, meaning they identify and sort around 10 items a second. After each material is sorted into its unique bay, it is baled and stored until it is ready to be shipped to recyclers around the country.  

The efficiency and scale of the recycling process at WM is incredible. Tours are available for the general public, as well as offered through Recycle Utah’s adult education program. For more information on the recycling process, please visit https://www.wm.com/us/en/recycle-right/recycling-101. Also, check out Recycle Utah’s YouTube channel for a more in-depth look at the MRF, where you can find a video tour and answers to some recycling FAQ’s! 

By Mia Moore

Emissions from travel can be some of our biggest carbon footprints! Sometimes, when traveling internationally or long distances, we have to fly. However, it’s worthwhile to compare driving and flying and how to reduce our emissions.

First, let’s look at shorter local flights and consider the increasingly fuel-efficient planes used today. Take the average flight from SLC to LAX, about 600 miles. The Airbus A220, a more fuel-efficient plane, would emit about 300 kg of CO2 per passenger one-way. Driving a mid-range gas car this distance would produce around 219 kg of CO2 total for the car, meaning that as you add more passengers, the per-person CO2 cost would significantly decrease. Getting to LA from SLC in a car with 2 passengers would produce about 109 kg of CO2 per person, versus 300 kg per person on a plane.

Now, let’s look at a longer flight. To fly from SLC to Honolulu–about 3,000 miles–you would be on a larger plane, such as an Airbus A330, which can hold about 250 people. The average CO2 emissions for a flight from SLC to HNL are approximately 1.1 tons of CO2/passenger. If you were to drive this same distance in an average mid-size gasoline car, you would emit about 1 ton of CO2 total for the trip. While not necessarily realistic, this calculation does tell us that it is still more fuel-efficient to drive long distances than fly. 

In basically every scenario, driving a moderately fuel-efficient car is more environmentally friendly than flying, though the efficiency of flying increases the further you go. Driving, especially carpooling, is usually the more environmentally friendly option. When thinking about air travel, it’s important that we understand the scope of our impact. The website https://www.myclimate.org/en/ offers a helpful carbon emissions calculator for both air and ground travel, which was used for the calculations of this article, and may be helpful in understanding your carbon footprint from travel.

By Mia Moore

The holiday hustle and bustle is behind us and, if you’re anything like me, the desire to slow down and sink into simplicity feels like a welcome shift after a season of excess. The new year has a way of inviting reflection. For me, that doesn’t just mean a fresh start with my goals or schedule, it’s also a time to reset my home by clearing out the clutter and physically making space for new opportunities.

I’m really looking forward to decluttering this year. The kind of clearing out I haven’t done since the pandemic, when we were all stuck in our homes surrounded by the weight of our belongings. So I’m bringing back a challenge called the “30-Day Minimalism Game” made popular by the guys known as The Minimalists.

The concept is straightforward: on Day 1, you remove one item from your home. On Day 2, you remove two. Each day builds on the last, until Day 30 when you let go of thirty items. By the end of the month, you’ve decluttered 465 items.

What makes this approach so effective is how gently it begins. Early days feel almost effortless, allowing momentum to build naturally. As the days progress, the challenge encourages deeper reflection about what we truly need, use, and value. It becomes less about getting rid of things and more about understanding our relationship with what we own.

But unlike Marie Kondo who asks you to bag up and throw out anything that doesn’t bring you joy, my challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to declutter sustainably. That means having responsibility over the items you own and thinking carefully about where these items go once they leave your home.

While donating is often seen as the eco-friendly choice, the reality is only around 20-30% of what’s donated gets resold locally. Many of our donated belongings are actually shipped overseas or ultimately sent to landfills.

Instead, I’ll first be trying these guidelines when decluttering:

• Giveaway – Whenever possible, I’ll be passing my items directly to someone who will use them. I have lots of neighbors with children younger than my own. I can almost always find someone interested in our clothing or toy hand-me-downs. If my friends or neighbors aren’t interested in what I’m looking to give away, I’ll post the items in our local “buy nothing” groups.
• Sell – I’ll be putting those gently used items that still have value up on Facebook Marketplace. My nicer pieces of clothing I’ll sell in my own shop, fulFILLed Lifestyle Co.
• Recycle – Instead of sending it to landfill, I’ll be sure to take materials like paper and certain types of plastic to Recycle Utah to be recycled.
• Repurpose – Some things are better transformed than tossed. Worn or damaged textiles still have purpose when they’re turned into cleaning rags or reusable cloths

Like living a more sustainable life, the goal of the Minimalism Game isn’t perfection, nor is it about deprivation. It’s about intention. Sustainable decluttering creates space for clarity and encourages habits rooted in mindfulness. Because January doesn’t have to be about drastic change. This practice teaches us how to ease into meaningful transformation by letting go—one item at a time.

By Kimberly Flores

Bitcoin trading has become increasingly popular in the last 10 years. Today, one Bitcoin is worth about $87,000 USD, and the global cryptocurrency industry’s worth is estimated around $2.6 trillion USD. Bitcoin operates as a digitally “mined” currency. Rather than gold being pulled from the Earth and valued based on scarcity, bitcoins are “mined” by servers from blocks (long sequential number chains), which equate to a complex mathematical equation. Bitcoin “miners” are then tasked with solving these block equations, with the reward being one new bitcoin. The ins and outs of bitcoin mining are extremely complex, but mining one bitcoin consumes approximately 155,000 kWh of energy. Comparatively, the average US household consumes approximately 90 kWh of electricity in one month. 

Recent research on the effects of bitcoin mining on air quality found that 34 Bitcoin mines combined used about 33% more electricity in a day than the entire city of Los Angeles. Similar to how AI data centers work, Bitcoin servers require high energy input to run and large amounts of water to cool computers and data centers. The energy demand from these data centers is so great that it can only be met by fossil fuels. 

Mining for gold can also be a very environmentally taxing endeavor. Pulling gold and other precious metals from the Earth consumes significant amounts of energy in different ways and presents several more ethical concerns, such as fair labor and trade issues. The gold and cryptocurrency industries are estimated to each produce around 100 million tons of CO2 in a year, based on research done in 2023; however, the gold industry is worth vastly more than cryptocurrency, being valued at around 14 trillion dollars. Additionally, gold is less variable as a currency than what we have seen so far from cryptocurrency. 

When executed sustainably, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies do present positive environmental opportunities as alternatives to precious metal mining. But sustainable mining practices are developing faster than sustainable data and server technologies. Until we can switch to reliable and consistent renewable energy sources for our quickly evolving tech needs, we are faced with a world that is becoming more and more reliant on fossil fuels and uses more energy each passing year. Bitcoin and AI data centers are at the forefront of discussions on regulations for companies producing large amounts of pollution or consuming large amounts of resources. Ensuring that these companies are held accountable and that resource use is regulated is the most promising path forward for the future of cryptocurrency. 

By Mia Moore

A letter, the last in a four-part series…

My Kin, I think often about your quality of life and health as I live my own with joy. What we do now will affect you and I’m trying to be aware and choose my actions with this knowledge. Giving back to our community is beneficial in a multitude of ways: time, treasure, or talent. While there are selfish people in our world today, there are also many who donate their precious time to help others and causes, in addition to money or their talent to support programs. I can only hope that you, my descendant, are surrounded by a nurturing and warm community. 

My Kin, I can’t imagine what state the world will be in during your time on earth, but currently, we experience extreme inequality from billionaires to homeless populations. My hope is that those with money are investing more wisely now, towards clean energy programs, water quality, social equity, and more. We can do that through our banks and stock investments, but many are still unaware of this. Sadly, money is still being invested in programs that benefit fossil fuels, large monopolies, and socially unjust causes that won’t benefit you many years from now. 

My Kin, we’re learning the importance of community in our lifetime today–similar to the way our ancestors and natives from hundreds of years ago lived–but it’s challenging with our nuclear families spreading across the globe. Hopefully, your families are close and tight, and your youth feel secure and stable without too many external influences from social media and divisive politics. I can only hope that your family feels content with friends, family, neighbors, and many pets.   

My Kin, I think often about what I have now–clean water and air, trees, wild animals, land, and food–and I can only hope you’re experiencing the same. Please know we are all trying…

By Mary Closser