the banning of bags

A town to the North, Telluride, Colorado has stepped up to banning plastic bags. One more town to jump on the progressive do-better ban-wagon.

At first council members in Telluride, Colorado thought that an approach to weening the community from plastic and paper bag use could begin by charging customers who use plastic and paper bags, yet came to the conclusion that they should- just ban the bags!

The idea or realization to ban bags began when Aspen, Colorado's Office for Resource Efficiency set a competition between the mountain towns of Telluride, Mountain Village and Aspen to see what community could cut its per capita consumption of plastic bags and encourage more community members to shop with reusable bags. Great initiative that took off and inspired the banning of bags totally- both plastic and paper.

It wasn't just about banning plastic, and not just paper too... “The whole point is that the consumer needs to understand the true cost of taking a bag,” said Councilmember Brian Werner, who asked if council has the ability to require retailers to charge a fee on paper bags." from the Telluride Watch

Banning bags at supermarkets and stores is not an easy thing for a city council to decide. There's a lot to consider when demanding community members have to pay for the use of bags. It's easy to assumer that everyone should just always have a reusable bag on them, but even as much as I try, it is hard to remember and walk into a store with a bag to use. As a council member of Telluride said: “We need an ordinance that makes sense, that is easy to work with, that has the support of a majority of the community and retailers, and that will work well with tourists andlocals."

I think starting with a small fee to use bags, that often are overused excessively, is a good place to start, yet accompanied with initiatives at the local level to educate consumers and provide creative and effective ways to encourage reusable bags- like an annual bag design competition to get community members and youth involved in using, supporting and advocating for reusable bags, as well as local artwork like they do in Frisco, Colorado with their annual contest and in Austin, Texas with 'Keep Austin Beautiful's' "design-a-bag" initiative.

If you are interested in hip and cool recycled material bags, great for the markets, visit my other website and Etsy shop.

Zero Waste?

So what exactly does Zero Waste mean? Is it possible? These were my questions when I read that Telluride, Colorado has a Zero Waste Action Plan for the Mountain Village of San Miguel county. And looking it over, it seems like a no-brainer that I want my community to think about too!

The Action Plan is laid out in these basic, but extensive areas:

Clean Production: More resource efficient, recoverable, less toxic production

Retail Stores: Consumer education and take-back programs (where products can be returned to the provider to recycle)

Consumer Buying Power: Creating consumer demand and eco-market & manufacturing standards

Producer Responsibility: Manufacturers are part of the solution, taking back their products or supporting recovery infrastructure

Resource Recovery Parks: Community center for total recovery, reuse, recycle, composting, material exchange and recovery

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs: Redesign and recovery. Create more jobs than resource destruction- Green Market

Changing the Rules: Removing market barriers and inequalities to support sustainable industry.

Shifting Subsidies: Stimulating green practices rather than favoring waste and pollution

Design for the Environment, Not the Dump: All products must be recoverable through reuse, recycling and composting.

That's it. Simple, common sense- right? All of these areas highlight thinking upstream, employing an iterative process, and using Cradle to Cradle design or darn near close. I believe this is the vision of tomorrow- it will become mandatory, necessary and favored, because it advocates for a better EVERYTHING.

However, with any long-term vision, there are hills to climb and some initial obstacles to change.

There are many areas that Telluride is working on to make this Action Plan a reality in fulfilling their vision of Zero Waste. Here are the areas which need serious consideration, which is probably a similar situation for all communities wanting to work towards Zero Waste:

"After review of the local solid waste, reuse and recycling system, there are a number of services that stand out as critical to moving forward with the Zero Waste goal in this region:

♦ Composting - A composting facility is needed to compost all organics, including yard trimmings,

food scraps and food-soiled paper

♦ Resource Recovery Park - More efficient recycling operations are needed to process reusables and recyclables from the region, including recyclables from construction and demolition debris, ideally in a Resource Recovery Park design

♦ Solid Waste System Redesign - Garbage contracts, rate structures and services provided need to be revised to provide incentives to all involved to move to Zero Waste (as detailed above)."