Category Archives: Recycling & Waste

Help Us Celebrate National Waste & Recycling Workers Week!

Help Us Celebrate National Waste & Recycling Workers Week!

June 16-24th marks this year’s Waste and Recycling Workers Week! These essential workers keep Salt Lake City clean and sustainable, rain or shine (even through the pandemic, earthquake, and wind storm!) every weekday of the year except for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day.

Our Waste & Recycling Division does some of the most time-sensitive, important work in the entire city! There’s all kinds of things you probably didn’t know about this crucial City division, such as:

  • Salt Lake City services more than 42,000 households, emptying garbage, recycling and compost bins every week.

  • Each daily collection driver empties between 600 to 900 bins — about 20,000 pounds — of waste, compost, or recycling EVERY DAY! Can you imagine what the city would look like if they weren’t on the job?

  • Next time you’re at an event like the Pride parade or the Utah Arts Festival (happening this weekend by the way!), please think about our team’s hard work to keep those events clean and running smoothly — and give them a thanks if you see them! 👋🏽 In 2024, Salt Lake City Waste & Recycling serviced more than 4,000 garbage and recycling containers used at 105 special events!
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Happy Earth Month from SLCgreen! 🌏

Salt Lake City is committed to protecting the public health and safety of its residents, including ensuring access to clean air, clean water and a livable environment. 🌏 This Earth Month, take some time to learn about how we’re working toward our Climate Positive 2040 Plan and tips you can start with today to make positive change in your life, community, and for a healthier planet.

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New year, new pickup day! Optimized waste and recycling collection routes to improve efficiency, service in Salt Lake City

The Waste and Recycling Division of Salt Lake City is making the first citywide change to its curbside collection schedule in more than three decades.

Starting the week of February 3, the City’s collection trucks will switch some weekly pickup days to effectively shift days for neighborhoods with the heaviest workloads to occur in the middle of the week when the City’s equipment and workforce resources are the most robust.

“When it comes to essential services like waste and recycling, we know that residents value reliability and efficiency above all else,” said Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall. “This new schedule will directly lead to more consistency in service and fewer disruptions due to inclement weather or unexpected events, making it a no-brainer for our City.”

All residents who currently have their waste, recycling, and yard waste containers serviced by the Waste and Recycling Division are being notified by direct mail and container tags.  

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Our 2024 Year-in-Review Highlights

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.

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Landscaping Equipment Exchange Spring 2024 Program Outcomes

Here at SLCgreen, we’re always working to find actionable, high-impact strategies to improve local air quality. This spring, we ran our first-ever Landscaping Equipment Exchange (in the past we’ve partnered with the State’s program). Our goal is to remove highly polluting gas-powered landscaping tools from the airshed and replace them with electric alternatives. Through this spring’s program, the City was able to: 

♻ Recycle 707 pieces of gas-powered equipment. 

⚡ Support the purchase of 1,324 electric landscaping tools.  

🌏 Reduce annual air pollution by 5,869 pounds.  

The Landscaping Equipment Exchange Program is part of Clean Air SLC – a new suite of air quality programs offered by the City to benefit Salt Lakers. It includes the landscaping exchange, the e-bike incentive program, and a forthcoming indoor air quality program – all meant to clear the air in our communities and homes.  

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Happy Plastic Free July!

By SLCgreen Intern Kate Kuwahara

“Plastic Free July” by Alachua County CC BY 2.0  

What is “in” this season? Refusing, reducing, and reusing plastics for a more sustainable summer. 

So … What is Plastic-Free July? 

Plastic-Free July is an initiative started by the Plastic Free Foundation, an organization founded by Rebecca Prince-Ruis that works towards the vision of a plastic free world. Since its beginning in 2011, the campaign has spread across the world, amassing an estimated 89 billion participants. Over the last five years, participants have collectively avoided 1.4 billion kilograms of plastic.  

The movement has inspired global action from Hong Kong to the Philippines to Melbourne. Examples include plastic free hospitality initiatives, community engagement centered on reusable alternatives, and refilling stations for household cleaning supplies and personal-care products.  

Now, you may be wondering: why are single-use plastics such an issue?

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2023 Year-in-Review Highlights

By SLCgreen

Every year, we release a Year-in-Review with featuring our high-level accomplishments as well as priorities for the year ahead. (Check out our full 2023 Year in Review booklet here!)

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:

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Saving Waste with Waste Less Solutions 

By SLCgreen Intern Iris Tang

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.  

Food waste is a major issue 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!  

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. 

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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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