SALT LAKE CITY — As we celebrate Earth Day, FOX 13 News took a look at recycling.
Rules for recycling vary by city, so that’s something to consider before you toss thin plastics, glass, or even your pet food bag into your bins.
“Recycling is real, is important and is an everyday action that you can take towards sustainability,” said Katsí Peña, a waste and education program lead with Salt Lake City.
There’s a good old saying: “Don’t make it more difficult than it has to be,” said Dennis Scholfield, the general manager for Waste Management’s materials recycling facility (MRF) in Salt Lake City.
Scholfield manages the “MRF,” where all of Salt Lake City’s blue bin contents get processed.
“In truth, just because something can be recycled or has a recycling symbol on it, doesn’t mean it can be recycled where you currently live,” said Kara Smith, a waste and recycling education specialist for the city.
But recycling does have its quirks. It used to be that local governments could ship off all their recycling in bulk to countries that would buy it, but city officials say those markets dried up as a lot of the materials ended up in landfills.
“Around 2018, 2019, a lot of countries, especially China, said, ‘Enough, we’re not going to take this anymore. You need to figure out how to deal with that locally or regionally in your own countries,'” said Peña.
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This meant local governments like Salt Lake City had to figure out contracts with local vendors, which can make the process a bit more complicated for people who live here.
“Locally, we have a local MRF, and that MRF only accepts cardboard, paper, they accept aluminum tin cans, [and] when it comes to plastics, they only do the hard plastics,” said Peña.
They also don’t handle glass bottles. While you might be used to tossing bottles in the recycling with your paper and aluminum, Salt Lake City had to find a second vendor for those. You can drop them off at sites across the city, or pay an extra $8 a month for a glass recycling curbside container.
“It’s a separate process. It just depends on how the government makes those contracts with the availability of the local businesses,” said Peña.
They aim to keep as much as possible out of landfills.
“Reducing our overall footprint, it just has a much greater impact on our environment, on us individually, on our community, air quality, I mean the list goes on and on,” said Robi Overson, the lead for the Collection of Hard to Recycle Materials (CHaRM) program.
For your city’s processing rules, check your local government’s website.
“For Salt Lake City, I recommend keep it to the three main things, which is: paper cardboard, tin aluminum cans, and the hard plastics. Keep it simple,” said Smith.
CHaRM is one of the programs offered by Utah Recycling Alliance to help get the word out about how many items can be reused. CHaRM has events where people can drop off larger items that cannot be tossed into a recycling bin, such as:
- Bicycles
- Carpet padding
- E-waste
- Expanded Polystyrene (EPS)
- Ink, toner, and printer cartridges
- Light bulbs
- Mattresses
- Metal
- Oral Care
- Plastic: Wraps and films
- Plastic: Clam shells
- Ski and snowboard gear
- Socks
- Tires & tubes
Upcoming events:
- Murray: Saturday, April 26, 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., across from the hospital on 5300 S. 100 W.
- Cottonwood Heights, Saturday, June 7, 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., Hillside Plaza on 7200 S. 2300 E.
