We all know composting is an important aspect of sustainability- it’s the most local form of recycling!
The US wastes approximately40% of all food— that is approximately $408 billion worth of food thrown away each year.
However, using your Salt Lake City curbside compost carts for green yard waste and eligible food scraps (fruit and vegetable scraps, eggshells, coffee grounds, tea bags) can help! Your brown containers divert organic waste to be composted at the localSalt Lake Valley Landfill. Purchasing the finished product for use in your yard or garden then creates a closed loop!
Participating in some form of composting– whether through our curbside program or by composting at home— helps mitigate climate change, and if you use the end product in your garden, helps with soil erosion, plant health, and more! Recycling food and yard waste creates a healthier environment for our communities.
We are officially well into 2023 and ready to share our full 2022 Year in Review with you! You might’ve caught our teasers on social media of what we’ve accomplished this past year but in case you missed it or want to read the full review, we’ve got you covered.
This past year we worked hard to provide sustainability in Salt Lake City, at both the city and local levels. Keep scrolling to catch a few highlights, and be sure to check out the full Year in Review for all the incredible work we did in 2022!
WASTE + RECYCLING
2022 Accomplishments
Emptied 4.3 million containers and provided weekly waste collection for approximately 42,000 residential customers.
Provide waste and recycling services for City parks and facilities, special events throughout the City, and curbside recycling for qualified small businesses and multi-family properties
Partnered with three local artists to create new wraps on our newest refuse trucks.
AIR QUALITY
2022 Accomplishments
Hosted an Indoor Air Quality Summit and launched a new public campaign to share best practices around keeping our homes, buildings, schools, and other spaces healthy.
Submitted a grant application for an EV car share pilot program at affordable housing properties
Expanded the City’s Comprehensive Sustainability Policy so that all new construction and major renovations of large City buildings will, when practicable, be constructed to use all-electric, combustion-free technologies.
Salt Lake City is launching its first-ever Food Equity Microgrant program to increase resident access to fresh, healthy, affordable, and culturally relevant food.
The grant application is now live and open to individuals, local businesses, and certain community organizations. The initiative is designed to support community-led projects in line with the recommendations coming out of the City’s Resident Food Equity Advisors’ report released in 2021.
“Salt Lake City is committed to listening and responding to the ideas, dreams, and suggestions of our residents,” said Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall. “The Resident Food Equity Advisors is an example of that. They gave us their insight and recommendations on how to strengthen our food system and this microgrant program is one of the ways we’re responding to their report. I can’t wait to see which projects we can support in the community with this funding.”
Administered by the City’s Sustainability Department, the microgrant program has a total budget of $35,000. Individuals may apply for grants of $250 to grow or raise their own food and community grants up to $5,000 are available for organizations.
As 2022 comes to a close, we want to give you an update on the exciting and important work that’s been happening with our goals and the program this year.
We’ve been steadily developing the governance structure and outlines of the program since it became established in state statute after the passage of HB 411 in 2019. You can learn more about the beginnings of this program and our carbon goals here.
This year we celebrated a total of 18 communities moving forward as of the July 2022 participation deadline. (There will still be another vote—likely in late 2023—by each participating community’s council to decide whether to participate in the final program once it’s approved by the Public Service Commission.)
The 18 communities form what’s called the Community Renewable Energy Agency, the interlocal government cooperative working to design this Program.
And, together, we can have a big impact on renewable energy development in the state and region! Collectively our communities represent about 25% of the electricity that Rocky Mountain Power sells in Utah.
The Program will bring new renewable energy resources to serve Salt Lake City and participating communities, so that by 2030, the amount of electricity we use annually will be matched by renewable generation.
This means the Community Renewable Energy Program has the potential to source 25% of the electricity the utility sells in Utah from renewable energy!
This is important because climate scientists agree that in order to avert the worst impacts of climate change on our health, ecosystems, economies, and societies, global emissions must be halved by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050.
Developing and implementing the Community Renewable Energy Program is one of leading strategies that Salt Lake City and other participating communities are taking to #ActOnClimate in line with these science-backed targets.
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 ahead! 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.
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!
A year-long effort to create solutions for Black-, Indigenous-, and People of Color- (BIPOC) owned businesses on the Westside of Salt Lake City to pursue rooftop solar and battery storage has received a significant boost thanks to a commitment from American Express.
American Express recently announced a $5 million global commitment to help cities build resiliency and fight climate change ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference which took place in Egypt last week. The Urban Sustainability Directors Network (USDN) has been awarded $1.2 million to work with three cities, including Salt Lake City, to install solar energy systems in our community.
American Express will provide $325,000 in philanthropic support to complement other incentives and financial strategies to help install solar with optional battery systems for small businesses on the Westside. These systems can lower energy costs for residents and businesses, can be more resilient than standard electric sources during extreme weather, support local clean energy jobs, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
View of the Utah State Capital Building from 500 North.
“I’m thrilled with American Express’ generosity, which will build off the hard work our City team and partners have done to advance solar on our Westside,” said Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall. “We have the tools to reduce climate emissions, strengthen community resiliency, and save our businesses and residents money through clean energy, and this collaboration is a perfect demonstration of that.”
November 1 is the official start of inversion season along the Wasatch Front and it certainly feels like winter is settling in around us!
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.
What causes an inversion?
Meteorologists on the news and the Utah Division of Air Quality will warn you in advance before an inversion happens. Here are some signs that you can keep a look out for:
Calm winds: this reduces the natural mixing of air temperatures.
Clear skies: this increases the rate of cooling for air close to the ground.
Long nights allow the cooling of the ground to continue over a longer period of time, resulting in a greater decrease in temperature near the surface.
The sun is lower on the horizon during the winter, so it supplies less warmth to the earth’s surface and more to the atmosphere.
In Utah, our inversions often occur right after snowstorms due to the increase in cold air near the ground and the clear skies warming up the upper atmosphere and acting as a lid to the cooler air below.
Inversions are meteorological events that are common in mountain/valley geographies with our weather patterns. When you pair inversions with human activity, you often wind up with pollution that sticks around. Here along the Wasatch Front, a significant source of pollution comes from transportation(roughly 50%), as well as our homes and buildings (roughly 35%). That means each of us can make a difference to our air quality.
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!
A trailblazing partnership of local governments will soon pool resources to fund carbon dioxide removal (CDR) projects in the Four Corners region. The 4 Corners Carbon Coalition (4CCC), established by Boulder County, Colorado and the City of Flagstaff, Arizona, today welcomed Salt Lake City, Utah and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Earlier this year, Boulder County and Flagstaff invested seed funding to launch this coalition with the goal of spurring regional CDR innovation to fight climate change. The coalition will provide catalytic funding to accelerate CDR project deployment and business development.
CDR describes diverse processes, on land and at sea, that take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, and durably lock it away in geological, biological and synthetic formations for decades, centuries, or even millennia. According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), cutting emissions from fossil fuels is necessary, but it’s no longer sufficient to stem the worst effects of climate change.
“We’re so excited to round out the ‘Four Corners’ vision with two cities that recognize the importance of local leadership,” said Flagstaff Mayor Paul Deasy. “This collaboration gives local communities the opportunity to put our fingerprints on this emerging and necessary space of carbon dioxide removal (CDR); to hold ourselves and our partners to the highest standards; to show what community-based CDR might look like and the potential benefits of supporting vetted projects in our backyards.”
