Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall, City Council Chair Amy Fowler and Vice Chair James Rogers visited a new recycling center Friday.
The facility will help process the 780 tons of recyclable waste city residents produce each month.
Waste Management finished constructing the 50,000-square-foot facility last summer but could not provide tours until recently due to the coronavirus pandemic. The center will sort up to 280 tons daily, collected from recycling bins throughout the Salt Lake Valley, according to a news release.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) The first stage of sorting begins along 2.5 miles of conveyor belts as Salt Lake City officials take their first in-person tour of the new state-of-the-art Waste Management recycling facility in Salt Lake City on Friday, May 7, 2021.
City residents toss out about 275 tons of cardboard, 280 tons of paper, 60 tons of plastic and 40 tons of metal cans every month. Materials recovered at the new recycling center, located at 3405 W. Harvey Milk Blvd. (900 South) in Salt Lake City, will be shipped to manufacturers in the U.S. and turned into consumer products.
The city entered into a 10-year recycling contract with Waste Management in 2019.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Salt Lake City take their first in-person tour of the new state-of-the-art Waste Management recycling facility in Salt Lake City on Friday, May 7, 2021.