Every year, we release a Year-in-Review featuring our high-level accomplishments as well as priorities for the year ahead. This is an important time and opportunity for us to take stock, learn from the experiences we had the previous year, and to continue to improve our programs, services, and operations.
While we engage with Salt Lakers mostly through recycling questions and efforts, we do so much more! Here are some highlights from 2024 and keep a lookout for more details in our 2024 Year-in-Review booklet coming soon. (Check out our full 2023 Year-in-Review booklet here!) Let’s take a moment to look back at what we’ve accomplished in just this year.
The holiday season is upon us! This can be a time to gather with loved ones and enjoy some great food, often bringing recipes we only enjoy once or twice a year. Holidays can also be a great place to start when rethinking long-held traditions, habits, and how our actions can impact our community. Food waste is a major issue in the U.S. even outside of the holiday season. About 40% of all food produced in the U.S. never gets eaten, and this amount increases by an additional 25% between Thanksgiving and New Year’s!
However you celebrate, we encourage sustainable habits around gathering for the holidays, from food waste to decorations. And what better place to start than buying local food! Salt Lake City’s Winter Farmers’ Market returns on Saturdays beginning November 9th and will operate weekly from 10AM to 2PM through April 19th (closed November 30th and March 15th). SLCgreen’s summer intern Kate Kuwahara visited the Downtown Summer Farmers’ Market for the first time and shares her new perspective on farmer’s markets and learning more about our food systems.
Salt Lake City is renowned for its recreation opportunities. With the Wasatch mountains right in our backyard, it is no surprise that many Salt Lakers, including myself, have an intense passion for outdoor recreation. Often those who love the outdoors already do their part in protecting it, like recycling and limiting single-use plastics, but when it comes to how we recreate, making sustainable choices may seem a bit more daunting. Check out these tips for making your outdoor adventures more sustainable.
It’s also an important time and opportunity for us to take stock, learn from the experiences we had the previous year, and to continue to improve our programs, services, and operations.
While we engage with Salt Lakers mostly through recycling questions and efforts, we do so much more! Here are some highlights from 2023 and keep a lookout for more details in our Year-in-Review booklet coming soon. (In the meantime, you can take a look at previous annual reports for 2022 and 2021.) Some notable achievements include:
Two weeks ago, I flew from Salt Lake City to Columbus, Ohio, to visit my family. I left during the peak of our first wintertime inversion; smog settled so thickly in the valley that I hadn’t been able to see the Wasatch Range in several days. The inversion was top of mind as I nursed a sore throat, feeling envious of my Midwestern family and friends who can take good air quality for granted.
As I sat down for breakfast at my brother’s house on my first morning in Columbus, my 11-year-old nephew focused in on the “I ❤ Clean Air” sticker on my Nalgene.
“Isn’t that kind of obvious?” he asked, eyes squinted with skepticism.
“You would think,” I said, grimacing. I took a moment to think of how to explain to him, and glancing around at our breakfast dishes, I had an idea.
The holiday season is upon us, and Thanksgiving is already around the corner. This can be a time to gather with loved ones and enjoy some great food, often bringing recipes we only enjoy once or twice a year. Annual traditions can also bring them long-held habits that can bring about excess food and plastic waste.
Reducing food waste is an often-overlooked way to reduce the impact of potent methane emissions on the planet and to help others, but our food choices are important. In Utah, food choices contribute about 25% of the household carbon footprint. This is a result of the growing, harvesting, transportation, packaging, and cooking processes involved with getting our food to our tables.
But holidays can be a great place to start when rethinking long-held traditions and habits and how our actions can impact our community. So no matter how you celebrate, we at SLCgreen want to encourage sustainable habits around gathering for the holidays, from food waste to decorations. With Thanksgiving being such a food-focused holiday, here are some tips to make the most of your meals and waste less food.
With fall in full swing, we wanted to share some seasonal reminders as we head into November.
Leaves and Other Yard Waste
Did you know a lot of your fall waste can be composted? Leaves, dead branches, clippings, and other green waste are all compostable! Composting where you can is a great way to divert waste from the landfill and lower emissions. Salt Lake City’s brown bins are for compost and their contents are processed at our city’s own compost facility. The facility processes the waste and recycles it into woodchips and compost, which are then available for purchase at the Salt Lake Valley Landfill. If you have questions on whether something is compostable, visit this link.
If you find that your brown bins are filling up, you can request additional temporary bins (at no additional cost) here or by calling 801-535-6999.
Max Barnewitz worked as SLCgreen’s Community Outreach Coordinator for several years before going on to earn their MFA in Comics at the California College of the Arts in 2023. In a recent project, Max found a through line between those two worlds, creating a comic explaining recycling in a fun, approachable way. (After all, who doesn’t want to hear about trash from a cute cartoon trash-panda?)
The Seventh Annual VegFest event is coming up this Saturday, September 9 at Library Square. This is one of Salt Lake City’s ACE-sponsored events and one our Department particularly loves attending every year.
We’ll be there tabling all day and encourage you to stop by and say hi if you’re out and about on Saturday.
The event is focused on celebrating veganism and raising awareness of the many plant-based foods and products available to us here in SLC.
In honor of VegFest, we wanted to highlight some of the environmental reasons to choose more plants, rather than animal products, in your weekly meal planning. Even swapping one meal per week can make a difference.
Brijette Williams, Sustainability Outreach Coordinator, lives in the suburbs but works and goes to school in Salt Lake City. She commutes by public transit as much as possible because it makes her travel time feel “valuable and productive.”
Instead of getting stuck in traffic on I-15, she can check emails, make lists for the day, or unwind without the stress of being behind the wheel.
Choosing to swap your car trip for a transit trip can help improve air quality and mitigate summer ozone. It’s also a great way to participate in this month’s Clear the Air Challenge, which encourages us all to take fewer single-occupancy car trips.
Here are some reasons to consider taking transit more often and tips to get started.
