Tag Archive for: Salt Lake County Recycling

Momentum has a New Destination for Mixed Recyclables

As of the start of May 2017, mixed recyclables collected from organizations participating in Momentum Recycling’s business services program have been going to Waste Management’s Material Recovery Facility (MRF) located in South Jordan, Utah. We feel strongly that this new path for your mixed recyclables will ensure greater capture rates while allowing us to have a more constructive dialogue about what can and can’t be recycled.

A quick update about items that are accepted in the mixed recyclables stream: plastic coated containers are okay to place in your blue bins. However, plastic bags and plastic film are still not considered acceptable items and neither is shredded paper (regardless of whether it is contained in bags).

Don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions you might have regarding acceptable items or our new partnership with the Waste Management MRF!

Business & Multi-Family Ordinance

Increasing Recycling in Salt Lake City

Business & Multi-Family Ordinance

The below article was written by Momentum Recycling “Amglassador” Ryan Goforth:

Increasing Recycling in Salt Lake City

A new Salt Lake City ordinance that passed on December 8th, 2015 is requiring businesses and multi-family complexes that produce 4 or more cubic yards of waste per week to recycle.

The reason for the ordinance is that businesses and multi-family residences produce half of all waste in Salt Lake City but only recycle 10-15% of that waste. This ordinance capitalizes on a huge opportunity to reduce the amount of waste in our landfills and recover important resources that would otherwise have to be mined from the Earth. Once the ordinance was enacted, waste haulers had 6 months to become authorized, while business and multi-family complexes will have 2 years to start recycling. After those 2 years when recycling among these businesses and residences becomes widespread, it is estimated that more than 20,000 tons of recyclable material will be kept out of Salt Lake landfills. This will help to increase the life of an already stressed system of landfills across the valley.

The ordinance states that these recycling services must be easy to access for customers and tenants so as to make sure that landlords and businesses cannot circumvent the ordinance. However, commercial properties without enough space for a bin can request to be reasonably excluded.

Certain representative groups for commercial properties are concerned about the ordinance and feel that it will put stress on their budget by forcing them to make renovations to their properties, costing them money. Another reason that commercial properties might not be inclined to recycle is because trash disposal rates are very low for Salt Lake City. Low waste disposal costs incentivize people to send more to the landfill rather than to recycle.

However, the long-term savings of increasing recycling would eventually make up for any short-term costs that might incur. Even though tipping fees are relatively cheap currently, they do add up over time, especially with a large amount of waste. When commercial properties are required to recycle, they will send less to the landfill and so be charged less in the long run.

This ordinance is a positive step in the right direction toward creating a more sustainable city and making Salt Lake a more appealing place to live. I hope that in the future Salt Lake will continue to be a champion for recycling and continue the move toward zero waste!

Mixed Recycling Bin

Why Can’t Glass Go in the Mixed Recycling?

Mixed Recycling Bin

The below article was written by Momentum Recycling “Amglassador” Ryan Goforth:

Why Can’t Glass Go in the Mixed Recycling?

             One of the most common questions I get when I tell people that I have a degree in environmental studies is “Why can’t I throw glass in with my other recyclables?” The answer I usually give is, “It’s complicated” – but, I gave this answer because before working for a recycling company, I only really knew the basics of why.

Before beginning my internship at Momentum Recycling, I looked into why recycling in Utah is split between glass and everything else. What I found is that it really isn’t all that complicated after all. I found that it makes sense to separate glass from the other mixed recyclables for several reasons.

One of biggest benefits of sorting glass at home is that it reduces the costs of separating the glass later. This is significant because those costs are often later transferred to the producer of that trash, which is us. In sorting our glass out beforehand, we can reduce the cost of our waste. But perhaps more importantly, we can enhance the quality of recycled material in the long run.

When you have a single stream recycling system in which all recyclables go together, the glass will inevitably break apart into tiny pieces. These tiny glass fragments get mixed in with the other recyclables, such as paper, and are essentially impossible to get out (think of a needle in haystack). This leads to a decrease in the quality of materials recovered, which translates to fewer options for potential outlets/products.

Why is this a problem? If a recycling process is able to create products that are of higher quality and can be turned into a larger variety of products, then this decreases the need for virgin materials. With single stream systems, the material that comes out is often not as high of quality as the material that went in. This means that more raw materials must be taken out of the Earth. This costs a vast amount of energy and resources that could be left alone if we just spent the time to sort our recyclables beforehand.

Of course, there are also drawbacks to separating glass out of the waste stream. The main one being that people don’t want to separate their recyclables and so end up sending more to the landfill. However, by limiting the amount of trash people can throw away or by charging them for how much they send to the landfill, you can make sure people will sort their recyclables. People would much rather spend a little extra time sorting than paying more money.

Single stream recycling is at a crossroads. There are so many different recyclable materials used today that material recovery facilities (MRF’s) are unable to effectively sort them all out properly. Glass, plastic bags, and food waste all create problems for recycling systems and we could make these systems considerably more efficient and effective by moving toward multi-stream recycling. Here in Utah, by not throwing our glass into the mixed recycling bin, we can produce much higher quality recycled materials while at the same time capturing more glass for recycling.

Salt Lake County Landfill

The Future of Landfills Along the Wasatch Front

The below article was written by Momentum Recycling “Amglassador” Ryan Goforth:

The Future of Landfills along the Wasatch Front

             One of the most commonly thrown around statistics about the Salt Lake Metropolitan area is that the population is supposed to double in the next 50 years. What does this mean for the residents of the Wasatch Front? It means that more energy and natural resources will be needed to support this population, as well as more goods and services. Which means that residents of this area will consume more and inevitably produce a lot more waste. This could end up being a problem for residents all along the Front because the landfills we currently use will be at capacity in the very near future.

Let’s start with the Salt Lake Valley Landfill, which coincidentally has about 50 years left until it is full. However, this 50-year estimate does not take into consideration that the Wasatch Front population is expected to double in that same time. When that happens, residents will have a very expensive problem to fix for a couple of reasons. To start, landfills are not cheap, they cost taxpayers millions of dollars to start and run. Another reason is that in 50 years, we won’t have room to put a landfill anywhere along the Wasatch Front. This will translate into much higher costs on us to transport waste further away to a new landfill. This will raise huge problems for the future of where we take our trash perhaps sooner than 50 years from now. The Salt Lake Valley Landfill isn’t the only one along the Wasatch Front, however.

The Trans-Jordan Landfill and Wasatch Integrated Landfill are two other major places our trash goes in the Salt Lake area. These landfills are much closer to the end of their life as each one only has about 15 years left. So what happens in 15 years when these landfills can no longer accept trash? Most likely that trash will go to the Salt Lake Valley Landfill, further decreasing the amount of time it will last. It is not all doom and gloom, however; there are easy ways to increase the life of our landfills.

60% of our waste is recyclable. Utah residents need to get to that number. If we could get to 60 percent recycled waste and maybe even higher as the City invests in recycling methods, we could dramatically increase the life of our landfills. This would save Utah taxpayers vast amounts of money in the long run and would conserve important natural resources.

Utah's Recyclable Goods Industry

Utah Sees Downturn in Recyclable Commodity Prices

Utah's Recyclable Goods Industry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fox 13 News highlighted the recent downturn in the prices of recyclable commodities produced from Salt Lake County’s recycling collection services. Momentum Recycling’s own John Lair discusses the value in creating a local economy for recyclables rather than relying on the global economy to make recycling viable.

Click here to view the video coverage and read the article.