Category Archives: Living Green

Friendly Fall Reminders From Your Waste and Recycling Team 

By SLCgreen Intern Iris Tang

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. 

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Please Recycle! A Comic by Max Barnewitz

Image shows a cartoon racoon saying "Recycling isn't a myth! But it is complicated!"

Recycling can be confusing. Whew—we know. Have you ever thought it could be explained in a more engaging way?  

We’re excited to share with you a special comic on recycling from one of our SLCgreen alums. 

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?)   

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Check out Salt Lake City’s Seventh Annual VegFest this Saturday! 

Graphic of person eating salad. Text: Go Green By Eating Green.

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. 

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Walking Works!

By SLCgreen Intern Emma Johnson

Walking is undoubtedly the most straightforward way to move around; humans have been doing it forever! Studies show that people are happiest and healthiest when they live in walkable communities. Walking is also beneficial to the environment and the economy. Despite these findings, in 2021 the average American commute reached an all-time high of 27.6 driving minutes each way. In the United States, only about 3-4% of commuters walk to work, which is sadly unsurprising based on the car-centric construction of many U.S. cities.

During the month of July, Salt Lake City is encouraging people to drive less in favor of walking, biking, and public transit as part of the Clear the Air Challenge. In 2022, this challenge was responsible for a reduction in over 53,000 trips and prevention of over 392 tons of CO2. This year, Salt Lake City employees and other residents will join teams and log their trips to compete and work towards a collective goal of saving 100,000 trips this year.

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Clear the Air, Try Transit

By SLCgreen Intern Iris Tang

Photo of a UTA trax line stopped at a station.

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.

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Plastic Free July: Learn to Live Without the Plastic

By SLCgreen Intern Kellen Hunnicutt

Graphic with two columns of images. Right "instead of" column has common single-use plastics trash of a plastic grocery bag, take-out fork and straw, plastic water bottle, and a to-go cup and containers Left "try" column has images of reusable items of a coffee mug, food container, cloth and net shopping bags, and reusable straws and utensils.

We live in a world that loves plastic. From grocery stores to coffee shops to our bathroom sinks, we see plastic pretty much everywhere. It makes sense. Plastic is lightweight, cheap, durable, and malleable, and in many cases, it serves an instrumental purpose. It keeps our food clean and safe from contamination, is ubiquitous in hospitals and clinics, enables home insulation and energy efficiency, and reduces the weight of cars, which saves gas.  

The problem is not these long-lasting or health safety-related uses of plastic. The problem is that we make and use a remarkable amount of unnecessary single-use plastic. Single-use plastics are items like bottled water, plastic grocery bags, and coffee cups that we throw out after only one use.

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Salt Lake City Approves Ordinance Update to Expand Electric Vehicle Charging at New Multi-Family Properties

One of the many ways Salt Lake City works to improve air quality is by making it easier to own an electric vehicle, which doesn’t emit any tailpipe pollution.

On that topic, we’re excited to report that theSalt Lake City Council enacted our proposed electric vehicle readiness standards on April 4!

This will enable more residents to charge their vehicles at home if they live in a new multi-family building.

The electric vehicle readiness standards were adopted as part of the Off-Street Parking ordinance (21A.44) and will require multi-family new-construction properties to include electric vehicle ready (EV-ready) infrastructure at 20% of installed parking spaces. It does not require that the EV stations themselves be installed; only the electric capacity and conduit to make it that much easier to put in a station as demand increases.

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We’re Dreaming of a “Green” Christmas

The holiday season can be a time of joy, time spent with friends and family, gift giving, good food, and rewatching our favorite comfort movies.  It’s also a time when thinking about and acting on sustainable alternatives is important! 

Holidays bring about plastic and paper waste, increased travel emissions, food waste, and the never-ending debate over plastic versus real trees. Check out some our tips for navigating this holiday season as sustainably as possible! 

Shop local: 

We’ve talked about the importance of shopping local for our food, but shopping local for gifts is also important! Keeping our shopping to our local, small businesses helps support the local economy. Additionally, shopping locally minimizes carbon emissions because travel is minimized for consumers and purveyors.  Supporting small, local businesses also helps to sustain our town centers and can help reduce sprawl and automobile use! 

Food waste: 

Food waste is a major issues even outside of the holiday season- about 40% of all food produced in the US never gets eaten.  This amount increases by an additional 25% between Thanksgiving and New Years! Here are a couple of easy ways to minimize your food waste: 

  • Plan a head! Figure out your menu ahead of time and plan for the amount of people who will be attending your event. Try and plan foods that you will enjoy eating as leftovers or can repurpose into other dishes (like turkey soup, curry, or sandwiches!). Consider doing more plant-based options for an increased impact! 
  • Compost! Any of the raw fruit and vegetable scraps created in the cooking of your delicious feast  can go into your compost bin to be turned into compost for you to use during the next planting season! Learn more about composting in SLC here. 
  • Send people home with leftovers! Tell your guests to bring their own to-go containers to help you eat through any remaining leftovers. 
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A Vegetarian Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving can be a difficult holiday for those practicing vegetarianism or veganism- with food being such a focal point and the main dish often being meat based. While there are other ways to contribute towards a sustainable lifestyle, how we eat is a major player in our individual carbon footprints. In Utah, these choices contribute to nearly 25% of our  household carbon footprint. Learn more about Dining with Discretion and the importance of understanding the intricacy of our food systems!

A vegetarian Thanksgiving can be easy, there are vegetarian/vegan roasts you can get at the store, but there’s something about creating a flavorful dish to share with your guests that took preparation and dedication. We wanted to make this holiday a little easier for our vegetarian and vegan friends this year so we made a menu, just for you!

Appetizers:

Stuffed Mushrooms

Kale and White Bean Artichoke Dip*

Candied Spiced Nuts

Pastry Wrapped Cranberry Brie

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Waste is Spooky! Here’s Some Tips for a Sustainable Halloween

It’s almost Halloween- a holiday of costumes, candy, and decorations! But can we do that sustainably? We sure can and we’re here to give you some fun, helpful ideas! 

Decorations 

Decorations can create a lot of waste with items that we don’t always reuse. Similar to other holidays, invest in decorations you can use year after year, or create decorations using items you already have! Check out these ideas for decorations we made using stuff from around the home. And don’t forget, you can compost your pumpkins after the festivities as long as there’s no wax or paint on them! 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cjv9zD9M7t5/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
https://www.instagram.com/p/CjdVzm4uoIA/

Here are some other ideas from when the SLCgreen team decorated our office, sustainably, a few years ago. 

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