CAST (Colorado Association of Ski Towns) Reusable Bag Challenge is a competition to reduce the use of single-use disposable plastic bags. Retailers throughout Eagle County are invited to join the competition. Currently the towns of Vail, Avon, Eagle and Gypsum are coordinating with retailers to remind consumers to use reusable bags during the competion period of March 1st through September 1st, 2009. The winning town, based on reuasable bag use on a per-capita basis, will receive a $5,000 grant from Alpine Bank to install a solar panel system. Hopefully this will encourage retailers and citizens alike to stop using plastic bags well after the competition is over.
Other participating Colorado towns include Telluride, Aspen, Mountain Village, Snowmass, Basalt, Breckenridge, Sliverthorne, Dillon, Frisco, Steamboat Springs, Grand Lake, Granby, Winter Park, Fraser, Estes Park, and Vrested Butte. Jackson Hole, WY, Park City, UT, Sun Valley, Ketchum, and Hailey, ID will also take part in the 2009 CAST challenge.
The Eagle Valley Alliance for Sustainability has been working with municipal governments, local businesses and grocery stores to prepare for the challenge. Once the competition begins, local participating stores will be responsible for tallying the use of every reusable bag used or purchased by a customer at checkout.
Eagle County is currently in need of a CAST community coordinator for the towns of Edwards, Minturn and Red Cliff.
If your are interested in becoming a community coordinator for Edwards, Minturn, or Red Cliff, please email
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or call 970.827.9999
If your are an interested retailer, please contact your corresponding coordinator:
Town of Avon: Danita Chirichillo at 970.748.4032 or
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Town of Eagle: Roman Yavich at 970.328.9628 or
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Town of Gypsum: Dawn Ritts at 910.524.1740 or
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Download this poster to hang in your store if you are participating, or this poster if you want to advertise the competition around town, or heck just download this 4x6 card to remind people about the challenge and get them to use a reusable bag instead of the nasty plastic ones.
If for some reason you still use plastic bags on the regular and feel they are just dandy, you might want to check out some of the resources below and I dunno....learn something!
Reel Thing Productions trailer for the Bag It Documentary is a good place to start.
Not convinced? Here is some more information on the environmental impacts of plastic bags...
Plastic carryout bags were first introduced
by retail stores in
the United
States in 1975 and began to be distributed to
customers at the point of sale in supermarkets in 1977. Today these bags are
ubiquitous in the marketplace because they are lightweight, strong, inexpensive
and convenient. Currently, the United States uses 100 billion
plastics bags per year at an estimated cost of 4 billion dollars and 12 million
barrels of oil.
Plastic carryout bags are made in a number
of different sizes and thicknesses and are typically manufactured from either
high-density polyethylene (HDPE-recycling symbol #2) or from low-density
polyethylene (LDPE-recycling symbol #4). The LDPE bags are thicker and are
generally used by department stores and other commercial retail outlets. The
HDPE bags are typically thinner, cheaper and are used much more widely by
supermarkets, pharmacies, and convenience stores and restaurants. These bags
are termed “single-use” bags because they are intended for one time use for
customers to carry their purchases from the store, followed by disposal or
recycling.
Plastic bags are recyclable, however, very
few are actually recycled. Research conducted by the County of Los Angeles in
2007 found that this is largely due to the logistics of sorting, high
concentration rates that reduce the quality of the recycled resin produced, the
low quality of plastic used in the bags, and the lack of cost efficiency due to
lack of a suitable market for the recycled resin. Various estimates suggest
that only 1% of plastic bags are being recycled.
Plastic bags never biodegrade. They
photodegrade, meaning they simply break into smaller pieces of plastic. Every
plastic polymer ever created still exists today.
Plastic bags
are a significant component of litter in the environment primarily due to their
durability and lightweight. Even when disposed of properly,
plastic bags are often blown out of trash receptacles and are easily carried by
wind and water to become entangled in vegetation, clog storm drains and
contribute to free floating plastic debris in the marine
environment.
We can live without plastic shopping bags
in our lives. If one person uses one reusable bag for one year, this individual
will reduce thenumber of plastic
shopping bags used and thrown away in this country by 350-500. Of all of the
lifestyle changes we will need to make to exist in a truly self-sustaining
society, this represents a relatively easy step in the right direction.
copyright 2009 - Eagle Valley Alliance for Sustainability
