Year over year, the collection of glass, metal, plastic, cardboard and paper in Park City in 2023 was down from 2022. Recycle Utah Executive Director Carolyn Wawra says the reduction isn’t alarming, but she’s curious.
“[The] big thing I want to stress with numbers like this is there's so many external factors at play, you know, what were what was the economy like? How much were people consuming? How much were people buying? Where were they? What were their habits, like, a lot of things are out of our control," Wawra said.
More than 3.3 million pounds of materials were recycled in 2023. That’s down from about 3.5 million pounds in 2022. On average the center continues to receive some 400 visitors every day. The good news she says could be that people are consuming less.
“We're just here to collect what people consume," she said. "And if people aren't consuming as much our numbers could be down. And I do think that the record snowfall we had last early winter also affected things. If you can barely get out of your driveway to load up your car to come to the recycle center might not be top of your list.”
Even though people may have not been able to get their recycling out for collection last winter, she says it doesn’t appear to have ended up in the landfill. The solid waste collected at Three Mile Canyon landfill she says is about even from the year before.
“I'm glad to see it was slightly even, you know, if had gone way up, then I would worry about, you know, the issues we had getting, recycling, you know, taken care of properly in the first six months of last year.”
Glass collection was down about 75,000 pounds last year and cardboard collection was down about 90,000. The four remote glass recycling bins were reduced to two, which she says may have had an impact. When the trucks hauling glass to Salt Lake had to change to accommodate the weight, she says they lost two glass collection bins because there wasn’t enough room for the dumpsters. The two remaining collection sites are located at the Jeremy Ranch park and ride and Triumph Gear in Silver Creek Village.