Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Jed Boal reporting Spring clean-up in our yards is still weeks away for most of us, but Salt Lake City now offers residents new options for what to do with that yard waste.
The city wants to promote even more recycling and give people more choice and flexibility to manage their household waste. Bottom line: the new options will reduce the amount of garbage piling up in the landfill.
Salt Lake City crews wind their way through neighborhoods dropping off new bins. The biggest change is residents can get s 90-gallon brown bin to recycle yard waste and downsize their 90-gallon garbage containers to 60- and 40-gallon containers.
Until now, options for yard waste were limited. "Either compost it in their yard or put it in their regular garbage. Now we have another option for them to recycle that waste," explained Debbie Lyons, Salt Lake City Health and Safety manager.
Yard waste will be chipped into a compost pile at the landfill and sold to the public to put back into the earth. Compost what you can in your yard--branches, stumps and other yard waste go into the bin.
"We're hoping that people are catching on to the recycling idea and recycling more in their blue bin and also recycling their compostable waste, and they will find they have less of the regular garbage," Lyons said.
Five thousand people have already received their new yard waste bins, and most of those people also downsized to the smaller garbage cans. The city expects the program to expand when neighbors see the new cans on the street next month.
"My husband found out about it on the Web site. I like to do yard work, that's what we can do this summer," Salt Lake City resident Bim Shirley said.
A recent report by the Utah Division of Solid and Hazardous Waste shows Utahns have a municipal waste disposal rate more than twice the national average, so we can all do better recycling and composting.
Only yard waste goes in the brown bins, or the compost can be contaminated. City residents can find more information and sign up online by clicking the related link.
Pick-up starts the first week of March.
