Category Archives: salt lake city

Mayor Biskupski Announces New Solar Installations Completed on Seven Government Facilities

SLC Solar Fire Station 10

September 14, 2017: Mayor Biskupski announces the completion of rooftop solar installations on seven city buildings, totaling 756 panels and 320,000 kW/year.

 

On Thursday at Fire Station 10, Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski, Fire Chief Karl Lieb and Tyler Poulson from the Sustainability Department discussed the City’s recent investment in solar power on seven separate municipal facilities, including five fire stations.

This latest round of installations doubles the total number of Salt Lake City municipal sites with solar energy to 14 separate facilities. When combined with the City’s recent enrollment in the Rocky Mountain Power Subscriber Solar Program, the total amount of renewable energy projects equals roughly 12 percent of annual electricity needs for City government facilities.

The locations receiving solar installations thus far in 2017 include Fire Station 1, Fire Station 4, Fire Station 7, Fire Station 10, Fire Station 13, Regional Athletic Complex and Pioneer Police Precinct. In total, 756 solar panels were added and they will provide between 17 percent and 92 percent of onsite annual electricity needs, depending on the facility. Continue reading →

UTA HIVE: Trax, Buses, and S-line Streetcar for $42/mo.


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by Colin Green

Another summer has come and gone, can you believe it? The days are getting shorter and the fall equinox is right around the corner. Crisp morning air greets us as we step outside, sending kids off to school and beginning our morning commutes.

Autumn is a time of fresh starts and new routines. This transition is a great time to build positive habits that will carry smoothly into the busy year ahead.

We’d like to encourage you to consider integrating a lower emission commute into your routine this fall.

Around the globe, urban transit is the single greatest source of transportation related emissions and it’s growing. By riding public transit, even a few days a week, you can do your part to reduce emissions.

Driving alone in your vehicle is also a major source of local air pollution. Did you know that over 50% of Salt Lake City’s air pollution comes from transportation?  By building public transit into your routine, you can make a difference on a local and global level.

The Hive Pass can help you do that! This Salt Lake City subsidized program, which launched several years ago, offers City residents half off the monthly UTA pass!  Continue reading →

Eat Local Week is Back!

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Eat Local Week is back! This fun week, sponsored by a variety of groups including Salt Lake City, is dedicated to helping you eat more local food.

This year there are a number of events that will get you into the local food spirit including lectures, workshops, and even a challenge: Can you eat every meal with food grown or produced in Utah this week?

Food that is produced locally is inherently more sustainable and this event series is a good reminder to take a look at your food habits and consider where your food comes from.

Here’s why it matters: Continue reading →

Paris, Sydney, Oslo . . . Salt Lake City: A Trip Report from the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance Conference

Several weeks ago, Salt Lake City’s Sustainability Department Director, Vicki Bennett, traveled to Sydney, Australia to meet with the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance (CNCA). The purpose of her trip (which was fully funded by a scholarship) was to share best practices in carbon reduction strategies with 20 other cities from around the world.

Each city sent a sustainability representative to discuss one collective goal: limiting global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius and how cities are taking on that challenge. Salt Lake City was selected to attend because of our commitment to lowering emissions city-wide via Climate Positive SLC, our membership with the Urban Sustainability Directors Network, and the involvement of Mayor Biskupski with Mayors For 100% Clean Energy.

“It was an honor to be included in this group,” Vicki said, noting that the attending cities all have some of the most progressive carbon reduction strategies in the world.

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Read on for an abbreviated version of Vicki’s trip report . . .

Continue reading →

SLC FruitShare: Saving Fruit That Would Otherwise Go Unpicked

By Brooke Taylor

Salt Lake City works in partnership with The Green Urban Lunch Box, a local nonprofit organization aimed to “empower people to engage in local food production by using the resources available in their community” to operate FruitShare. Volunteers help pick fruit from residents’ registered trees, then distribute the harvest 3 ways:

1/3 goes to homeowners, 1/3 goes to volunteers, 1/3 goes to hunger relief (Utah Food Bank, local food pantries, shelters, health clinics, and anti-hunger organizations)

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From Seeds to Good Deeds: Backyard GardenShare Fights Local Hunger

By Frances Dingivan

Did you know that the average American wastes about one pound of food per day? Or that backyard gardeners throw away about 10 billion pounds of food per year in the United States? Even half of that produce could feed 14 million people. Meanwhile, more and more people are going hungry. 1 in 5 Utah children experiences food insecurity. Additionally, refugee and immigrant populations in Utah are growing, with more people finding themselves in need of food. Luckily, we have the solution in our own backyards.

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(Mostly) Normal curbside waste collection on Monday, July 24th

 

There will be (mostly) normal** curbside waste collection on Monday, Pioneer Day, for the majority of the city. The normal curbside schedule will also be in effect the remainder of the week.

**However, if you live in the vicinity of the Pioneer Day Parade route, your collection may be delayed.

SLC’s Waste & Recycling Division has contacted a small number of residents who will have a delayed collection as a result of the Pioneer Day activities. If you did not receive a notice, your curbside collection will remain the same.

Areas in yellow, below, will not have curbside service on Monday. It will be delayed and collected on Tuesday, July 25th.

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Yellow area: pickup delayed to July 25.

Thank you in advance for your understanding and cooperation as we strive to provide the safest and highest quality service to our residents.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact us at 801-535-6999.

 

Moving forward with a Comprehensive Sustainability Policy for Salt Lake City Corp

by Brooke Taylor

As our readers know, one of SLCgreen’s core goals is to help you adopt tips and practices to make your life more sustainable. Whether that’s reducing your contribution to air pollution, learning how to eat more local food, or understanding what to recycle, all of us have a role to play in making Salt Lake City a more sustainable place to live.

That goes for our own operations as well. One of the major areas of focus for SLCgreen (as the City’s Sustainability Department is known) is helping SLC Corporation adopt best practices when it comes to those same sustainability measures we ask of our community.

That’s why we’re delighted to share with you some elements of our new internal Sustainability Policy, signed in January 2017 by Mayor Biskupski.

Sustainability Collage

This policy affects Salt Lake City’s approximately 3,000 government employees, the community as a whole, our vendors, and the supply chains emanating from those vendors. By vowing to practice the best sustainable methods in all operations from prohibiting Styrofoam cups in break rooms, to carefully tracking our buildings’ energy usage, SLC is setting a community standard—a green standard.

We’d like to note that many of the guidelines in the Sustainability Policy were already in effect through various executive orders and policies, but this is the first time the best practices have been consolidated and turned into a comprehensive document.

If you’d like to read the whole policy, you can find it here.

Otherwise, read on for highlights . . . Continue reading →

Salt Lake City Employees Wrap Up a Year of Sustainability Actions through Empower SLC

by Maggie McCormick

 

The 12-month program promoting sustainability education and action for city employees, Empower SLC, has come to an end. After 12 themes and nearly 50 weekly topics, we hope the lessons learned will help SLC Corp employees adopt more sustainable practices into their everyday lives.

Empower SLC, which began in April 2016, was designed as a training platform by Sustain3 and implemented by the Sustainability Department for Salt Lake City’s nearly 3,000 employees. Our goal was to encourage sustainable practices amongst city staff. Each month, employees participated in monthly themes, such as waste reduction, energy conservation, water conservation, and clean air transportation, and completed weekly lessons and activities.

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Salt Lake City Partners with the International Rescue Committee on the City’s first Urban Farm

New Roots participants work the soil and harvest greens on one of the IRC’s other farms.

You may remember our post last February, Salt Lake City Seeking Sustainable Farmers as part of the City’s initiative to provide more opportunities for local farmers to produce sustainable agriculture. Our goal with the Request for Proposals (RFP) for Urban Farming was to work with an area farmer or organization to convert a formerly-vacant 1.5-acre City plot into a productive oasis. In doing so, our aim was to strengthen the community, environment, and well-being of both farmers and nearby residents alike.

We’re thrilled to let you know that the International Rescue Committee was chosen!

The non-profit’s New Roots SLC program, which works with experienced refugee farmers, will transform the currently unused space adjacent to the Sorenson Unity Center into an organic, sustainable, and diversified vegetable farm.

The non-profit currently provides land, technical assistance, and market access for over 30 refugee farmers at other locations around the valley.

We’re pretty excited about this partnership. Here’s a bit more about how New Roots works . . .

Continue reading →