Businesses, city governments doing their part to fight dirty air


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OGDEN — The air quality Tuesday was good, but Utahns across the Wasatch Front have experienced those murky skies in the last few weeks. The state’s bad air is certainly top of mind right now, and some companies and city governments are making some changes.

Take Bank of Utah, for example. The company has a lot of drive-through lanes at its 13 branches between Logan and Orem. As customers pull into those lanes now, they see signs that say: “Stop idling. Start saving.”

“We thought it’s just a natural: Let’s jump in and encourage our customers to turn off their cars while they’re waiting,” said Scott Parkinson, senior vice president of marketing and communications for Bank of Utah.

The bank took a cue from the city of Ogden, which launched its third annual idle-free week on Monday.

“There are a lot of public issues where we can just wring our hands and wish somebody else would fix it. This is one of those issues where every single person in a car can make a difference,” said Ogden City Councilwoman Caitlin Gochnour.

Utahns in other areas are also taking on good environmental practices. The University of Utah has had an idle-free campus for several years now. Students and staff all receive free passes for buses, TRAX and commuter rail; all parking structures now have plug-ins for electric vehicles; and there's a telecommuting policy in place too.

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Intermountain Healthcare is in the process of changing all of its fleet of vehicles to natural gas.

KSL and the Deseret News have started the Save a Drive Utah campaign, where employees and the public make a pledge to reduce driving during bad-air days and have the opportunity to win $100.

On Tuesday, the Utah Legislature began working on five different pieces of legislation to address Utah’s air quality problems.

Back to the Bank of Utah, instead of traveling between its branches for meetings several times each week, managers now conduct business by video teleconferencing. They've crunched the numbers and found they saved thousands of gallons of fuel and reduced pollution.

“Not only do we save all the emissions and carbon in the atmosphere, we’re keeping people off the road — (saving) all those miles we would be reimbursing those employees for driving to these meetings, and the time lost in the car,” Parkinson said.

Bottom line is you don’t have to be a city government or a big business to make a difference. We can all do our part.

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Keith McCord

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