Clean air is something that the Salt Lake Chamber is a big supporter of. Air quality greatly affects our health, quality of life and our state’s economy. We must all do our part to ensure Utah’s air can stay clear.
One new effort by Deseret Management Corp. (DMC) this month is called “Save a Drive”, in which a $100 winner will be picked daily from online readers who pledge to cut down on the miles they drive until the end of February. Readers of www.ksl.com andwww.deseretnews.com, both part of DMC, can pledge to “Save A Drive” and will be entered in a daily drawing for $100 throughout the month of February.
“We live here and breathe the same air as our audience,” said Chris Lee, president of Deseret Digital Media, part of DMC. “Our employees and our management all feel that we should do everything we can to build awareness and encourage solutions to this problem.”
The Deseret News print edition is also embracing the initiative by including tips on how readers can improve air quality at the top of their front page on inversion days.
“We’ll also let readers know the forecast health level for the day and explain that readers can go online to make their reduced-driving pledges,” said Dave Schneider, Deseret News assistant managing editor.
“We have learned more than half of of the pollution problems are caused by tailpipes on cars,” Lee said. “By saving a drive, each of us can help improve the air quality and if each of us will do a little a little bit, that will help a lot.”
“We do a lot of awareness building through our reporting in print, radio, television and online,” Lee said. “But this campaign is solution driven. We know this won’t solve the problem, but we are trying to stir solutions from the community. The creativity of how people save the drive is up to them.”
Lee said the digital campaign is the first by the corporation to link action with a monetary reward.
To combat the inversions this year, the Salt Lake Chamber implemented an Emergency Inversion Initiative to get businesses to take their efforts to the next level. We support and applaud our members to take steps to encourage their employees as well as the public to drive less, drive smarter and also implement more clean air practices in general.
