Recycle Utah festival teaches Park City fifth graders sustainability habits

Roughly 250 Park City fifth graders spent a day at Recycle Utah’s annual Sustainability Festival learning habits meant to outlast the school trip and shape what they do at home, at school and in the community.

The annual event, now a 20-year tradition, brought students from Park City School District’s four elementary schools together for lessons on basic recycling, natural resources, water and energy conservation, alternative energy and climate change. Recycle Utah Education Director Chelsea Hafer said the point was to give children practical tools, not just a one-day experience. “These community grants make programs like the Sustainability Festival possible. Accessible environmental education is so important for youth and this grant allows us to provide free programming to fifth graders across Park City,” Hafer said.

That free programming depends on local support, including Park City Rotary grants, and it fits into a broader education effort that Recycle Utah says reaches far beyond the festival itself. In August 2025, the nonprofit said its back-to-school plans aimed to teach 6,100 Summit County students during the school year. In November 2024, it said its youth education programs had reached more than 5,000 children.

For families, the lesson is intended to be concrete: sort waste correctly, cut down on what gets thrown away, conserve water and electricity, and think about how transportation choices affect the environment. Recycle Utah has used school visits, Earth Month events and transportation campaigns to reinforce the same message across Summit County, where environmental stewardship is tied closely to the community’s identity and the health of the local outdoors economy.

The festival also points to a larger transition for the nonprofit. Recycle Utah has finalized the purchase of 4.18 acres near Home Depot and the High Valley Bus Transit area for a new facility and plans to leave its Woodbine Way location in March 2027. The organization says its current center can divert 52 items, while the new site is intended to expand recycling options for Park City and the surrounding area.

Recycle Utah has also said it collected more than 29 tons of trash in community cleanups over the past six months, underscoring that the festival is part of a larger effort to turn sustainability from an annual lesson into a daily habit.