Recycle Utah

Nonprofit Summit County, Utah Recycling Center

#zerowaste

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

Summer Produce Preservation

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Summer produce is magic: Corn, tomatoes, peaches! Greens, turnips, sugar snap peas! Summer squash, beans – and more tomatoes! 

Whether you’re growing it, eating it, or both, the season’s bounty is glorious. What do you do when there’s too much of one thing – or items start to turn? Here are a few of Summit Community Gardens and EATS’s favorite tips to minimize food waste and use all the harvest:

  • Greens wilting? Bring a pot of water to a boil, blanch for 2 minutes, and drain. Chop and freeze to put in winter soups & stews or saute with onions & garlic.
  • Are your cherry tomatoes getting soft or split? Roast them on a pan of parchment paper with a little salt and oil at 400. Their sweet tang is perfect on a sandwich, folded into eggs, or as part of a vegetable saute.
  • Peaches or any stone fruit soft or bruised? Roast on a pan with parchment and eat with yogurt or ice cream.
  • These things should be stored in the fridge: apples, beans, beets, broccoli, cabbage, chard, citrus fruits, collards, cucumbers, kale, lettuce, okra, peppers, radishes, turnips, zucchini, and all kinds of greens.
  • Melons, pears, and tomatoes can ripen on the counter, then be stored in the fridge.
  • Store greens in the fridge with a damp towel so they can last longer!
  • Make sure to store onions away from potatoes.
  • Store root vegetables in a sealed container with a dry towel.
  • And of course, pickle just about anything!

    By Helen Nadel

Stay Cool In The Summer Heat

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When it heats up outside, Americans spend big bucks to cool off. Our love of the air conditioner costs us about $29 billion a year, using 183 billion kilowatt-hours. And, while those air conditioners are cooling off our house, they are helping to heat up our earth by releasing over 117 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the air annually. Save money and keep cool with a few simple steps:

  • Use window coverings to your advantage. If you’re not home during the day, close all window curtains and blinds to keep your house cool for as long as possible.
  • Use the ceiling fan even if the air conditioner is on! The average ceiling fan costs less than a penny an hour to run and can make you feel 3-8 degrees cooler, so you can turn your AC a few degrees higher. Set your ceiling fan to rotate counter-clockwise, to increase the airflow.
  • Pay attention to your appliance usage. Appliances such as irons, washers, and dryers can add significant heat to the inside of your home. Use these appliances at night or early in the morning to avoid adding big sources of heat to your home during the hottest hours of the day. Consider eliminating the dryer and using a clothesline.
  • Consider changing your light bulbs. Incandescent light bulbs waste about 90% of their energy in heat. Switching to compact fluorescent or LED bulbs will keep your home cooler and your energy bills lower.

Laundry

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Laundry is something we all do habitually. Our washers and dryers are two of our household’s highest energy-consuming appliances, consistently running in our homes. A dose of creativity and change can not only save electricity, but also gas, waste and money. Read on for tips!

  1. Wash on cold. Heating water is responsible for more than 70% of a washer’s energy consumption. Ironically, some stains like sweat or blood can actually ingrain further into fabric in hot water vs cold water. Cold water washing also reduces wrinkles, fading and shrinkage.
  2. Upgrade to Energy Star. You can also look into heat pump dual washer/dryer options or a heat pump dryer. Efficiency is affected by design, age, and settings used. Run machines during ‘off-peak’ hours if possible, after 10 pm or mid-day.
  3. Ditch fabric softeners. They are an extra expense and can leave residue in the wash. Try old, faithful, and inexpensive white vinegar instead. Similarly, ditch dryer sheets and replace them with natural wool dryer balls to reduce static and drying time. Don’t forget to regularly clean the lint filter to maximize dryer efficiency!
  4. Reduce plastic waste by transitioning from large plastic jugs (often laden with chemicals) to washing sheets, tablets, pods, or eggs. After experimentation, my family settled on an egg in combination with homemade powder detergent.
  5. Re-wear clothes if possible before filling the washer load and use drying racks or clotheslines! Utah air dries clothes in no time and preserves quality.

Finally, how do we reduce microplastics (often from nylon, polyester, and acrylic clothing) from entering our laundry? The best options are to wash less, use full loads and cold water, use less detergent in front-loading washers, hang dry, use a microplastic filter bag or attachment filter, and buy more clothing made from natural materials.

Change is challenging. But like seasons, relationships, technology, or weather, change surrounds us. The time has come to step out of our habitual boxes and shake things up to grow with the times, for our planet, pocketbook, and health. Good luck and have fun!

By Mary Closser

PFAS: The Forever Chemicals in Dental Flosses

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Here in our ski community, we were alarmed when we learned that toxic chemicals called PFAS (per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances) were detected in our drinking water. Researchers have found them nearly everywhere. When it was verified that PFAS are ingredients in some alpine and Nordic ski waxes, Park City took action. Recycle Utah alerted ski shops and consumers to bring any fluoro-waxes they were using to the center for safe disposal and to choose safer alternatives. PFAS waxes were banned at all FIS ski and snowboard events starting in the 23-24 season.

PFAS break down in the environment over hundreds of years or not at all; thus, their description as “forever chemicals.” Because they accumulate in the environment over time and have been found to be toxic in notably low concentrations, scientists are increasingly interested in finding out how different PFAS affect animal and human health. And now, they have been able to link PFAS to altered immune and thyroid function, liver disease, lipid and insulin dysregulation, kidney disease, and adverse reproductive and developmental outcomes such as low infant birth weight and cancer. It turns out that PFAS are used in the manufacture of a wide range of industrial and consumer products, including some dental flosses, especially those marketed as “Teflon” strands, and those with non-stick coatings that “glide” easily between teeth.

Since 2023, 12 states have implemented laws that restrict or ban all PFAS. In 2019 an important study at Harvard was published to get a clearer idea of how people absorb PFAS. Researchers in the study found that a large group of female subjects who daily used Oral B Glide Dental Floss, known to contain a specific PFAS, had higher levels of it in their blood than those who did not. In discussing findings, a Harvard reviewer noted, “Although conventional non-stick pans have a larger surface, “we don’t chew on them like dental floss.” (P. Grandjean, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Buzzfeed, Jan. 2019).

There are alternatives to dental floss coated with “forever chemicals”. Some options include unwaxed floss; silk, bamboo, and plant-waxed floss; Tom’s of Maine floss; and Listerine Ultraclean Waxed Mint Dental Floss. Researchers advise not buying floss marketed by Colgate, Crest, CVS, Oral-B, and Signature.

By Bev Harrison

Mastering Curbside Recycling

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When Recycle Utah goes into schools to teach Summit County students, we always start with the same introduction. We review various materials and where they can be recycled, and always tell students to go home and share what they learned with their families. If we’ve visited your student’s classroom, hopefully, you’ve heard it before! But if you haven’t, here’s a comprehensive guide to mastering curbside recycling.

It’s essential to know what can go in your curbside recycling bin and to recycle correctly. If contamination rates are too high, the entire bin could be discarded. The rule of thumb is “When in doubt, throw it out”. It’s better to throw one thing in the landfill than to risk contaminating your entire bin! We have seen much lower curbside recycling contamination rates in recent years; a decade ago, our county’s recycling contamination was about 35%, compared to today’s 20% contamination. The best way to ensure that your waste is truly being recycled is to make sure your recycling isn’t contaminated.

Curbside recycling accepts metal cans, hard plastics (like bottles and containers), paper (newspapers, magazines, office paper), and cardboard (corrugated boxes). It’s crucial to stick to these categories to avoid contamination. Glass items cannot go into mixed stream curbside bins. Glass contaminates other recyclables and can cause entire batches to be rejected. Instead, use local glass recycling drop-off bins. Food waste should never go into curbside recycling bins. Even small amounts of food residue can contaminate recyclables and render them non-recyclable.

All recyclables should be placed loose in the recycling bin. Avoid placing them in plastic bags, as they can jam recycling machinery. If recyclables are in a plastic bag, they will likely be mistaken for trash and end up in a landfill. Ensure that recyclables are at least 90% clean and dry before placing them in the bin. Rinse out food containers, remove any food residue, and let them dry completely.

Our landfill is filling up quickly, and the only way we can extend its lifetime is by creating less trash. Proper curbside recycling reduces waste, conserves natural resources, and minimizes environmental impact. By following these guidelines, you help ensure that your efforts are effective and contribute to sustainable practices in our community. Mastering curbside recycling is not just about following rules—it’s about making a meaningful impact on our planet!

By Chelsea Hafer