Mayor Erin Mendenhall and Salt Lake City’s Sustainability Department opened applications for the SLC Food Microgrant program to increase Salt Lakers’ access to fresh, healthy, affordable, and culturally relevant food.
Continue readingBy SLCgreen intern Wiley Speckman and staff Jude Westwood
Thinking about a new car? Gas feels familiar and reliable, but if you care about climate change and air quality you may want to consider an electric vehicle (EV) instead. Here’s what you need to know.
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January is recognized nationwide as Radon Awareness Month, a public health initiative led by federal and state agencies to encourage radon testing and mitigation in homes and buildings.
Winter conditions often increase indoor radon levels due to reduced ventilation, making this month especially important for awareness and action.
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Each winter, the Wasatch Front experiences a natural weather pattern called an inversion — when a layer of warm air traps colder air (and pollution) near the ground. With nowhere for pollutants to go, our valley becomes a smog-filled bowl.
This impacts outdoor air and can affect indoor air quality, especially during long-lasting inversion events. As we enter peak inversion season, here’s what you need to know to keep your home healthy, safe, and breathable.
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Winter brings one of Utah’s biggest air quality challenges — inversions. But what exactly is an inversion? This natural phenomenon occurs when a high-pressure system is setting up, trapping cold air on the valley floors with warmer air above it. This warm air also traps all our pollution with the cold air, keeping it contained in the valley until the inversion breaks.
To help keep our air healthy when it matters most, the Utah Division of Air Quality (UDAQ) created the Mandatory No Burn Program.
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As Salt Lake gardeners know, the cold is settling in and the growing season has just come to a close. We are all gearing up for holiday season – a time when food is more than just a meal. It is central to cultural celebrations and community connections.
This is an especially hard time for food insecurity.
In our city, about 1-in-4 (25%) residents are food insecure. Thousands of our neighbors rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly called “food stamps,” to make ends meet. Even when the benefit program is operating normally, families often must make difficult choices between necessary expenses like healthcare, childcare, paying rent, or putting food on the table. That is why recent developments around SNAP have been so concerning.
Continue readingIt’s hard to believe we’re already six months into the Indoor Air Quality program!
October is Healthy Lung Month — the perfect time to give your lungs and your home a fresh start. As cooler weather moves in and we spend more time indoors, a quick “Air Quality Reset” now can help you breathe easier all season long.
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From a backyard garden to classrooms in Glendale, Proyecto Xilonen (pronounced “shee-LOW-nen”) is growing more than food. They’re growing knowledge, resilience, and cultural pride. Thank you, Proyecto Xilonen, for showing Salt Lake City the power of honoring our roots to nourish our future. Read on to learn more about this community leader and a 2025 recipient of our Community Food Microgrant Program.
Continue readingby SLCgreen Intern Talea Steele
We all know air quality is a problem for Salt Lake City. We can see our poor air quality in the winter with smoggy inversions, but you may not realize that air quality is just as big of an issue during the warmer months!
Let me introduce you to… OZONE! Ozone is formed by pollutants such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, and volatile organic compounds that interact with sunlight and heat. As temperatures rise across the valley, the formation of ground ozone rises as well, making us much more likely to breathe it in. Since ozone is odorless and invisible, we may not realize that breathing it in is damaging our cardiovascular systems and is like getting a sunburn to our lungs… ouch!
So, what can we do about ozone to help keep our air and communities clean? One important and easy thing we can all do is to be idle free!
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