Summit County’s recycling future unclear ahead of Recycle Utah’s 2026 closure

PARK CITY, Utah — Recycle Utah’s longtime drop-off center in Bonanza Park will close on June 30, 2026, after Park City and Summit County officials directed the nonprofit to vacate the property.

“We’ve always known that Recycle Utah would need to leave this site eventually,” Recycle Utah General Jim Bedell said recently, noting the nonprofit was formally notified at a joint city-county meeting in January.

Last year the nonprofit hired Michigan-based Resource Recycling Systems (RRS) to assess local waste practices. The consultants calculated Summit County’s landfill-diversion rate at 12 percent, compared with a national average of 32 percent and significantly higher rates in peer mountain towns such as Vail, Aspen, and Jackson.

“RRS helped us realize just how low and how poor our diversion rate is,” Bedell said. “Despite all the lofty zero-waste goals the community talks about, we haven’t invested in the infrastructure necessary to process enough material.”

RRS recommended building a $25 million materials-recovery facility on at least five to six usable acres to handle current waste volumes and projected regional growth.

City–county offer falls short, nonprofit says

Park City and Summit County offered Recycle Utah a four-acre parcel in the Snyderville Basin, but Bedell said only about three acres are usable and no funding was attached.

“The space itself is not sufficiently large,” he said. “More importantly, the proposal didn’t have any funding.”

Recycle Utah replied with a letter urging local governments to pursue a larger, publicly financed facility — potentially on county-owned land near Home Depot known as the Gilmore parcel — and pledged to help operate or support the project.

Governments draft new plan without nonprofit

A May 19 draft letter obtained by TownLift shows the county and city intend to create a county-wide recycling program by June 2026 that would replace Recycle Utah’s collection role with multiple satellite drop-off sites and one central hub. The letter states officials are “moving forward without their collections facility.”

“I haven’t seen a letter,” Bedell said in a May 22 interview. “If and when we do, we’ll discuss it with our board and respond accordingly.”

Deputy Summit County Manager Janna Young wrote that the goal is “to be fully transparent with Recycle Utah about our planning efforts and communicate that we are moving forward without their collections facility, but there is an opportunity for a continued partnership if they are interested.”

Park City Councilmember Bill Ciraco, the city’s liaison to Recycle Utah, said he was blindsided.

“I wasn’t part of the decision-making process that said that’s the offer we were going to make,” Ciraco said. “By the time I was brought in, the decision had already been made.”

“Recycle Utah is not asking for a blank check,” he added. “They’ve said, ‘Here’s the need. Here’s a proposed solution. We can help operate it, we can raise money for programming, but we can’t build this ourselves.’”

City cites 2026 eviction date, ongoing support

In an official statement Park City said: “Park City and Summit County offered Recycle Utah a 4-acre parcel in the Snyderville Basin to support and enhance their operations and secure a long-term location for the future. Recycle Utah has yet to accept that offer. As part of the Bonanza Park area redevelopment, Recycle Utah must vacate its current location by September 1, 2026. Park City remains committed to ensuring continued access to recycling services.”

Mayor Nann Worel told the City Council, “Our sustainability manager and the deputy county manager have met to come up with a kind of a county recycling waste diversion proposal. I believe we’ll be getting a report on that fairly soon.”

3.5 million pounds of material in limbo

The Bonanza Park center currently handles roughly 3.5 million pounds of recyclables a year. Without a replacement site, that material still needs a destination.

“We’re going to have to figure out how to deal with three and a half million pounds of material, because none of us want it in the landfill,” Bedell said.

Possible stop-gap measures include remote drop-off stations, satellite collection points or renting warehouse space for the center’s baler and Styrofoam densifier.

Bigger than one nonprofit

“This is not about us as an organization. It’s more about us as a community,” Bedell said. “If city and county officials came back tomorrow with a plan consistent with what the experts recommended and said they would operate it, we’d be fine.”

He urged residents who support stronger landfill diversion to contact elected leaders.

“If you agree that keeping material out of our landfill is important for both environmental and financial reasons, let your civic leaders know,” Bedell said. “The risk is that our facility closes and we find ourselves going backward rather than forward.”

County and city leaders say more details about the new system will be discussed as early as June 12.