Dear educators of Salt Lake City,

In addition to wasting gas and contributing to air pollution, idling creates a concentrated area of emissions known as a hot spot in your school’s pick-up zones. While sitting in an idling vehicle, drivers and passengers are exposed to higher levels of pollution than when in motion. Children’s health is significantly at risk in hot spots; young, developing lungs breathe more rapidly and inhale more pollutants.

As you may be aware, Salt Lake City’s Idle Free Ordinance prohibits unnecessary vehicle idling over two minutes. With the help of your school Salt Lake City can eliminate 365,966 lbs of air pollution annually with one act—be idle free!

In coalition with UCAIR and Utah Clean Cities, we challenge your faculty, staff, and students to actively improve the air quality around the school and in their neighborhood by completing these simple tasks:

• Print the Educational Brochure, Parent/Guardian Info Slip, and Pledge Sheet and send them home with your students. The Educational Brochure is also available in Spanish (coming soon).

• Encourage your students to get pledging signatures from parents, guardians, family, school staff, and neighbors, and return the pledges in one week.

• Students, parents, and guardians can learn to talk to anybody about our IDLE FREE CITY with this sample conversation.

We encourage you to incorporate the idling reduction program into a larger study of the environment and tie it to other activities for students. Allow your students to make an impact in the valley by talking to the vehicle drivers in their lives about the importance of being idle free and making other changes to improve the environment. For educational support, Breathe Utah offers teacher training and has a variety of lesson plans available.

Young lungs are particularly susceptible to harmful vehicle emissions. Please talk to the owner of an idling vehicle and ask them to turn off their vehicle until they are ready to drive.

• Print this handout to share (with a smile!) when addressing an idling vehicle operator.

• Here is a sample conversation you can use to kindly ask the operator of an idling vehicle to “turn your key, be idle free.”

• To request “turn your key, be idle free” window decals, please email SLCgreen@slcgov.com.