Dive Brief:
- Curbside glass recycling is now available, for an $8 monthly fee and $45 startup fee, to residents of Salt Lake City's Emigration Canyon, Canyon Rim, and Olympus Cove neighborhoods, and the cities of Taylorsville, Cottonwood Heights, Holladay and Herriman.
- The Wasatch Front Waste & Recycling District — which has operated centralized glass pickup for years — partnered with Salt Lake City-based Momentum Recycling, which will pick up the glass monthly.
- The recycling district, which serves 81,000 homes, formed in 2013 when trash services were severed from county government. In 2014, the district began providing a green waste disposal.
Dive Insight:
Making recycling easier for residents is always a good move to increase participation. "The idea behind all of these [initiatives] is to try to help people divert from throwing stuff into the landfill and at least make it convenient to do so," Jeffrey Sean Summerhays, sustainability coordinator for the recycling district, told Salt Lake City Weekly.
Jeff Whitbeck, vice president of operations for Momentum Recycling, told ABC4 News, "Currently we're receiving about 1,000 tons of glass a month at our facility at Momentum Recycling. We anticipate that with this program we'll be able to increase that by 400 to 500 tons probably within a year, so the impact will be massive when it comes from diverting recyclables from away from the landfill."
That's more than 3 million pounds a year that will be kept out of the landfill. Plus, the recycled glass is turned into material that's used for fiberglass insulation, asphalt surfacing, sandblasting, and water filtration systems.
Summerhays added, "This isn't some vague feel-good green message. This is glass going to a locally owned Utah company that is then selling their commodity, glass or broken down glass, to other locally owned Utah companies."
