It was five years ago, during the first annual MT2030 (Mountain Towns 2030) conference featuring the great Jane Goodall, that we first announced the creation of Park City Community Foundation’s Climate Fund. The fund was created by community members who were passionate about progressing climate solutions locally.
Sarah Hall, one of the founding members, always remembers the launch date because it falls on her birthday. “It was a day I will never forget,” Sarah says. “We were all filled with a sense of pride and hope! And it’s been so great to see how the Climate Fund has evolved since that day.”
After launching in 2019, the Climate Fund started granting money to local nonprofits working in the environmental space. The idea was to pool donations to implement local, high-impact, and replicable climate solutions. In the years following, the fund granted over half a million dollars to various climate-focused organizations that are doing amazing on-the-ground work like Save Our Snow, Three Springs Ranch, Ecology Bridge, and many others.
After the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Community Foundation got to work investigating what climate solutions would be the most impactful, achievable, and replicable in the area. In discussions with various experts and building on the groundwork of Park City Leadership Class 24, the Climate Fund’s steering committee investigated the community’s local landfill.
“That’s when the Community Foundation said: It’s big. It’s achievable. Let’s do it,” Andy Hecht, Climate Fund Manager at the Community Foundation, explained. “That’s when we made the strategic decision to focus on and fund Zero Food Waste.”
The Community Foundation launched the goal to reach Zero Food Waste in our local landfill by 2030 in 2023, and its strategic plan followed in January of 2024. The first phase of the multi-year and community-led movement launched this summer with a residential food waste collection program and a recent grant to Waste Less Solutions, a nonprofit focused on food rescue, to expand into Summit County. Looking ahead, the initiative plans to work closely with businesses and local governments to get this rolled out and adopted county-wide.
It is exciting to see the evolution of Park City Community Foundation’s Climate Fund in the past five years, and we’re excited to see what comes between now and 2030. A big thank you to our founding and current Climate Fund Steering Committee and Working Group Members for making this important work possible. We couldn’t do it without you!
To reach the goal of Zero Food Waste by 2030, everyone in our community will need to come together. If you haven’t already, please sign up for curbside food waste collection, and take advantage of the incentive program for the first 1,000 homes that was generously sponsored by Park City Mountain, through the support of Vail Resorts EpicPromise. If you’re interested in supporting this important work, please consider a donation to the Climate Fund.