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Posts tagged ‘glass recycling’

Mar 9

Be a Recycling Champion! Sign up for SLC’s 2022 Master Recycler Program!

Become a champion for reducing, reusing, and recycling in our community!

Are you interested in the ever-changing landscape of recycling?

Do you want to learn why composting is an integral part of waste diversion?

Have you always wondered why glass is recycled separately in Salt Lake City?

Or wanted to learn how to effectively promote recycling practices within your community?

Salt Lake City Green is excited to announce the 2022 Salt Lake City Master Recycler program! Register now at SLCMasterRecycler.com.

Applications will be accepted through Monday, April 4th (unless we fill up sooner).

This FREE program provides in-depth education about recycling, composting, policy and solid waste management for Salt Lake City community members and professional sustainability practitioners.

Master Recyclers touring the recycling facility (aka a MRF site.)
Master Recyclers touring Momentum Recycling.

The Master Recycler program gives participants a behind-the-scenes look at Salt Lake City’s waste management system from bin to the recycling plant.

Participants are required to attend two “core” classes, Waste and Materials Management I and II, which include tours of the Salt Lake Valley Landfill, Waste Management’s Material Recovery Facility (MRF), and Wasatch Resource Recovery’s anaerobic digester!

After finishing these two classes, participants choose a minimum of four additional electives, and two hands on activities (however, they can take up to 6 electives and 3 activities) from a variety of options, like; Compost 101; Food Waste with Wasatch Resource Recovery; Business & Multi-family Unit Recycling; Glass Recycling; Policy Making 101; and Living a Zero-Waste Lifestyle.

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Nov 24

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Salt Lake City and Momentum Recycling Unveil New Public Art Piece —a Glass Recycling Dumpster

November 24, 2020

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What started out as a small idea to beautify one of Salt Lake City’s glass collection sites has become a highly-visible statement piece in Liberty Park. To celebrate the importance of glass recycling in the community, Salt Lake City and Momentum Recycling unveiled on Nov. 18 a new dumpster at the Liberty Park drop-off location featuring a hand-painted, wrap-around mural of Utah red rock arches by local artist Josh Scheuerman.

The piece brings a splash of public art to a frequently-used recycling location, trading the basic blue of the original dumpster for a bright mural paying tribute to Utah’s iconic natural landscapes.

Local artist Josh Scheuerman’s Arches design on the new glass recycling dumpster.

“As a native Utahn, I feel responsible for the wild and natural places,” Scheuerman said. “I believe it’s vitally important for new technology and information to help increase recycling alongside local art.”

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Nov 6

Celebrate America Recycles Day November 15!

Except for maybe Earth Day, America Recycles Day is one of our favorites. November 15 is all about Recycling. It’s particularly worth celebrating this year because, even during a pandemic, recycling is one of the easiest and best ways to help the planet.

According to the EPA, Americans have drastically improved our recycling recovery rate – from only 7% in 1960, to 35.2% in 2017.  Recycling and composting help us reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills, conserves natural resources and energy, and prevents pollution. You can find out exactly how much energy is saved when you recycle with this calculator from the EPA! On top of the environmental benefits, recycling also creates well-paying jobs and supports the economy.

Join SLCgreen for America Recycles Day this November 15th.

In Salt Lake City, we do our part to help improve recycling. With compost and recycling efforts, we are able to divert 42% of our waste from the landfill. In August 2020, we recycled 606.1 tons of your recyclables. Recycling at this rate helps avoid 880 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions. It also helps save the energy equivalent to powering 79 homes, and the daily water needs of 12,205 people!

You can be confident that this material is making its way to legitimate destinations. Our recycling contractor, Waste Management, has been keeping all plastic recycling domestic since last year.

They have also opened up a state-of-the-art new recycling facility here in Salt Lake City that benefits our residents, as well as other customers and communities throughout the state.

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Dec 20

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Your Waste & Recycling Questions

Salt Lake City’s waste & recycling survey closed earlier this month. We are grateful for all of the feedback– we received nearly 6,200 responses, which is a record!

Now our team is busily combing through over 12,000 of your comments. We plan to compile these into a feedback summary in the new year. Stay tuned!

Bales of aluminum at a recent visit to the local recycling facility that processes SLC’s residential recycling.
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Waste & Recycling Tips

In the meantime, we’ve been reading a lot of questions about Salt Lake City’s waste & recycling services. So we thought this would be a good opportunity to share some answers, links, and helpful resources:

What’s recycled in SLC? 

SLC is dedicated to keeping recycling and compost available. Residents can recycle clean and dry plastic containers, cardboard and paperboard, aluminum cans, and paper in the blue curbside containers.

Go even further with waste diversion when you use the brown compost can for yard trimmings AND kitchen scraps. This includes veggie and fruit scraps, coffee grounds and paper filters, tea bags (no staples or string), and eggshells.

Does recycling even matter?

Yes! It absolutely makes a difference. For example, in June 2019, Salt Lake City residents recycled 585 tons of cans, bottles, paper, and cardboard. To put this in perspective, this saved the equivalent of 5,732 mature trees, 2,238 cubic yards of landfill airspace, enough water to meet the daily needs of 41,625 people, and enough electricity to fulfill the annual needs of 175 homes! All this recycling helped us avoid 2,027 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions, which makes for cleaner air too.

Multiply those numbers by 12 and you have the average impact of Salt Lake City’s curbside recycling program over the year. You are making a difference–thank you!

Recycling matters— this topic was the inspiration behind our newest truck wraps.


New recycling facility coming to Salt Lake City this spring

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Jun 20

An Inside Look at Glass Recycling at the “Party at the Plant” on June 27

Glass is one of the best materials to recycle. Not only does glass recycling help stimulate the local economy, glass can be recycled endlessly. Indeed, 80% of recovered glass is recycled into new glass bottles. The rest is turned into industrial materials. Momentum Recycling, Utah’s glass-only recycling facility, provides a critical service to our communities by taking care of our glass and moving Utah closer to zero waste.

Momentum Recycling curbside glass bin.

A Look at the Recycling Process

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Jan 24

Help Us Encourage Businesses & Apartments to Recycle

Salt Lake City prides itself in our commitment to sustainability, and recycling is the first and most basic tenet of that commitment.

This commitment to sustainability and recycling is why we have gradually increased the number of services offered to residents over the last several years from curbside recycling to compost to glass recycling. It’s also, in part, why we introduced the Call 2 Haul program last year to achieve greater diversion from the landfill.

Resident waste, however, only accounts for about 40% of the total amount of material being generated. That’s why we also have a construction and demolition recycling ordinance (targeting 9-10% of generated waste) and a business & multi-family recycling ordinance passed in December 2015 to target the rest. The latter went into effect in January 2018.

Salt Lake City businesses generate roughly half of the waste in our city, making it important for this sector to recycle. This is the intent behind Salt Lake City’s Business & Multi-Family Recycling Ordinance (9.08.200) which took effect in 2018.

The business recycling ordinance is not aimed at small properties or businesses, nor those properties which provide lower-income, Section 8 housing. Instead, it is focused on the medium- to-large properties that are creating more waste.

More specifically, a business or property in Salt Lake City that generates more than four cubic yards of waste per week is required to offer recycling. This is approximately equal to eight, 96-gallon curbside containers and is roughly what multi-family properties with 15 or more units, and businesses with 10-15 or more employees, would produce.

Spread the Word

Only 10-15% of business waste was recycled before the ordinance went into effect. That number is gradually increasing, but we’d like your help!

Are you aware of a business or multi-family property that is not offering recycling? Let us know!

Simply fill out this form or email slcrecycles@slcgov.com and we’ll contact them to follow-up.

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Jul 19

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Why Glass Recycling is Great

by Nayethzi Hernandez, SLCgreen intern, and Sophia Nicholas

With all the news of recycling markets changing, as we discussed in our previous post, it’s more important than ever to practice Reducing, Reusing, Refusing (single-use products) and Recycling Right.

So it’s worth thinking about how we as consumers can make a difference and shift our habits to consume different products with less packaging and more recycling-friendly materials.

That’s why we’re excited to talk about glass!

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Glass bottles ready to be turned into something new!

In Utah, we’re fortunate to have a local glass recycling facility, Momentum Recycling. In Salt Lake City, you can participate by signing up for curbside pickup! You can also take your glass to a convenient drop-off location.

With nearly 5,600 subscribed households, 78 active drop-off areas, and dozens of businesses participating in glass recycling, the Salt Lake City community is already headed in a very sustainable direction. Read more

May 5

Shopko Glass Drop-Off Location Closed

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With the closing of the Shopko store in Sugarhouse and new construction occurring, that glass drop-off location is now CLOSED. Please see the map above for the Fairmont Park location just 1-block away.

As always, you can find information about Glass Recycling in Salt Lake City at our website SLCgreen.com as well as utah.momentumrecycling.com.

Thanks for recycling!

 

 

 

Apr 20

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Earth Week Day 5: Common Recycling Mistakes

Are you making these recycling mistakes-

It’s Earth Week!

Each day this week SLCgreen will post different tips and activities to challenge you to reduce your impact on the Earth.

To build off our waste theme, today we are looking at some common recycling mistakes.

Below is a list of common recycling errors and how to fix them.

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Apr 14

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Become a Salt Lake City Master Recycler!

SLC master recyclerSalt Lake City Green is excited to announce our new Master Recycler Program, coming this May! We’re currently looking for our inaugural Master Recycler class.

Do you want to be one of Salt Lake City’s first certified Master Recyclers? Fill out this short form & we’ll be in touch!

What is Master Recycler?

Salt Lake City Green is working to build out a network of residents who are trained and certified Master Recyclers who understand all aspects of waste reduction, city services and bin downsizing options.

Class Details

Master Recyclers commit to attending eight weekly workshops running from May-June 2015. Classes are scheduled for Tuesdays from 3-6 p.m.

Workshops will cover a variety of topics and emphasize opportunities for hands-on learning. Every workshop includes a field trip for a behind-the-scenes look at the Salt Lake County Landfill, Salt Lake City Sanitation, Rocky Mountain Recycling, landfill composting operation and Momentum Glass Recycling. You’ll even “tag” along with Salt Lake City’s can inspection team!

What’s in it for you?

  • Recognition as one of the first certified Master Recyclers in Salt Lake City (awesome plaque included!)
  • A tote bag full of Master Recycler swag, including t-shirt and stainless steel water bottle.
  • The knowledge to help your friends, neighbors and kids maximize your recycling & reduce your impact on the environment.

Sign up! We’re currently recruiting our inaugural Master Recycler class. Fill out this form & we’ll be in touch!

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