By Justin Adams | [email protected]

Sandy City is going green.

In the month of June, the city rolled out two new services available to Sandy residents who want to be a little more environmentally friendly: glass recycling bins and 45 new electric vehicle charging stations.

For the glass recycling, Sandy City is contracting with local company Momentum Recycling to give residents the option of adding a glass recycling bin for their home. Picked up once a month, the service costs $8 per month and can be paid through residents’ regular city utility bill.  

The service includes pickup reminders through call, email or text notifications so you don’t miss the one pick-up day each month. 

Within the first few weeks of being available, Sandy Deputy Mayor Evelyn Everton said over 500 people signed up, a sign, she said, that this is a service that’s been in high demand among Sandy residents. 

Those who are interested in enrolling in the service can sign up at utah.momentumrecycling.com/sandy/.

The city also opened 45 new electric vehicle charging stations throughout the city. 

Spread between various city-owned properties like City Hall, Alta Canyon Recreation Center, the Sandy Amphitheatre and River Oaks Golf Course, the charging stations will make it a lot easier for drivers of electric vehicles to find a place to charge up.

Funding for the new charging stations comes entirely from outside the city. As soon as Mayor Kurt Bradburn took office, he made finding grants for these charging stations a top priority, said Everton.

Rocky Mountain Power provided over $300,000 for the stations and $25,000 came from UCAIR, a statewide clean air partnership. $118,000 also came from a settlement with Volkswagen after the company was caught cheating emissions tests. (The settlement “requires Volkswagen to invest $2 billion in zero emission vehicle charging infrastructure and in the promotion of ZEVs” throughout the country, according to the EPA.)

 

“On behalf of Sandy City we really want to thank our partners,” said Bradburn during a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the chargers at City Hall. “One of the things we harp on in our administration is one of the only ways we’re going to get things done is through public-private partnerships and bringing great ideas together from both the private sector and the government sector.”

The chargers were free to use through the month of June, after which they charge 20 cents per kilowatt hour for the normal chargers, and 25 cents per kilowatt hour for the fast chargers, which can fully charge an electric vehicle in one hour. 

Everton said the city’s environmental efforts reflect one of Sandy residents’ top priorities. 

“We’re all living in the Salt Lake Valley. We’re all aware of the air quality issues,” she said. “It’s a concern for all of us when we walk outside and we see the smog. It’s a deterrent for people and companies to move here. We all just need to do our part to contribute to cleaning up the air.”