Recycle Utah General Manager Jim Bedell said a plan to build a new 30,000 square-foot facility with state-of-the-art features has been put on the “back burner” after talks with Park City and Summit County officials.
“We think we need to make that investment as a community now to get our diversion rate up, but we respect the fact that, first of all, we don’t have the funding to pay for it — we’re a nonprofit,” Bedell said on KPCW’s Local News Hour Tuesday.
Park City and Summit County have offered Recycle Utah a four-acre parcel off U.S. Highway 40 near Home Depot, but it hasn’t been accepted.
Recycle Utah plans to leave its headquarters on Munchkin Road in Park City’s Bonanza Park neighborhood by July 2026 due to future development in the area. The existing facility processes 3.5 million pounds of material every year.
Bedell said discussions with government officials about the 4-acre property are ongoing and “accelerated recently.”
“The role of Recycle Utah in waste diversion is to operate facilities, not build them,” he said. “There is not a nonprofit in the country that we are aware of, that has built waste management infrastructure.”
Summit County Manager Shayne Scott said on KPCW’s “Local News Hour” Tuesday funding challenges are still being addressed by Park City, Recycle Utah and the county.
“We’d like to donate the property, and we believe it’s worth millions of dollars — $6, $7 million — we think that would be a good location for the operations that they are currently doing at the Munchkin [Road] site in Park City,” Scott said.
The Park City Council and Summit County Council are scheduled to hold a joint meeting August 18.
Park City Municipal, Summit County and Recycle Utah are financial supporters of KPCW.
