Last week, three Park City businesses were acknowledged for their commitments to sustainability in the past year. KPCW’s Emily Means has more.
Recycle Utah recognized The Christian Center of Park City as the Green Business of the Year at its recent Green Business Awards, with Deer Valley Resort receiving the People’s Choice Award and Riverhorse on Main the Zest for Zero award.
Christian Center Executive Director Rob Harter says the goods the Center collects get repurposed and reused, while food waste is composted—or food that isn’t available for human consumption is donated to local farmers. Additionally, the organization has implemented other eco-friendly efforts that merited them the title.
"We’ve really worked hard, and Richard Breitenbeker, our receiving manager, has really taken seriously the sustainability role that we gave him over the last year and a half, working closely with Carolyn and Mary," Harter said. "We’ve done a really concerted job to educate our staff; to sort a bunch of things and use the system that Recycle Utah set up. So, we collect all these metals, and outdated electronics and things like that, and we said, 'Recycle Utah has a great system—let’s collect it, take it over to them and let them recycle it.'"
A recent building expansion also contributed to the Christian Center’s reduced carbon footprint. Harter says the Center wanted to align itself with Park City’s goal to be green.
“We really tried hard to have our HVAC system be energy-efficient: LED lighting, we had to get all new windows because they were very inefficient," Harter said. "Probably the biggest thing was, thanks to Rocky Mountain Power and the Blue Sky Grant, we got 81 solar panels. We project that we’ll save about a third of our electricity costs because of our solar panels, and that’s a huge bonus for this new building, so we’re super excited about that.”
Over the holidays, Recycle Utah took in 160,000 pounds of recyclable material, including cardboard, glass and plastics. Recycle Utah Executive Director Carolyn Wawra says the organization spends about $5,000 per year recycling everything that’s collected from Dec. 26 through Jan. 9.
