Have you been to the Summit County landfill? On any given day you can see plastic bags lining the landfill’s fence or dancing in the branches of surrounding aspens and forests. Not a pretty site! It’s a shame to think that plastic bags can only be recycled once! Most often, recycled plastic bags become composite decking like Trex. In the good words of County Recycling Manager, Kevin Berg, “Plastic bags aren’t a recycling problem, they are a consumption problem.” Do you make the connection? The issue starts at the stores not at the recycling site. Plastic bags are made from petroleum. So a plastic bags lifecycle begins at the same place you fill up your car. And we’re experiencing a gas crisis? Americans use between 300 and 700 plastic bags in one year and most of these end up in the landfill. Not only do they blow out of landfills like they do here in Summit County, but plastic bags photodegrade or break down into small toxic pieces when exposed to sunlight. These small bits can seep into our water and soil. A plastic bag’s useful life may be counted in minutes but it can take a plastic bag hundreds or even thousands of years to completely break down in a landfill environment. There are options for recycling plastic bags but it condones and even encourages single use behavior. People often use more plastic bags when they know that they can recycle them later. Sometimes the act of recycling goes without complete understanding for all that is involved… such as the use of non-renewable resources in the production phase! Why use plastic bags in the first place? We have readily available alternatives and solutions to plastic bags - reusable bags that you can bring to the store every time. Remember to bring your own bag! Each reusable bag has the potential to eliminate the use of an average of 1000 plastic bags in its lifetime. 2009 CAST REUSABLE BAG CHALLENGE RESULTS
The results are in and while Summit County came in 3rd in the Challenge, we all won by diverting 411,680 plastic bags from the landfill over the course of six months. We saved 40 bags per person in Summit County! Congratulations Summit County and lets keep up the good work and kick the single-use plastic bag habit for good. Congratulations to our friends in Basalt who saved 48 bags per person. As the winning town, Basalt received $10,000 toward the solar panel installation at one of their local schools. The prize was sponsored by Alpine Bank and PCL Construction.
Twenty-six mountain towns in the Western United States collaborated on a voluntary initiative to reduce consumption of single-use, disposable shopping bags. The competition went from March 1, 2009 to September 1, 2009.
Participating Colorado towns were Telluride, Aspen, Mountain Village, Snowmass, Basalt, Breckenridge, Silverthorne, Dillon, Frisco, Steamboat Springs, Grand Lake, Granby, Winter Park, Fraser, Estes Park, Crested Butte, Vail, Avon, Eagle, Gypsum, and Mnt. Crested Butte. Jackson Hole, WY, Park City, UT, Sun Valley, Ketchum, and Hailey, ID also took part in the 2009 CAST challenge. Community organizers in competing towns worked with their municipal governments, local businesses and grocery stores to prepare for the challenge. The list of partnering organizers ranges from environmental and sustainability groups like Summit County’s High Country Conservation Center to the Carbondale Rotary Club to the Girl Scouts troop #214. Local participating stores were responsible for tallying every reusable bag used or purchased by a customer at checkout. The ‘winner’ was determined on a per capita basis by which community uses the most reusable bags during the six-month period. Thanks to Summit County's Participating Stores: BigHorn Materials, Silverthorne City Market, Breckenridge City Market, Dillon Safeway, Frisco Skee Vue Grocery and Liquors, Breckenridge Vitamin Cottage Natural Grocers, Dillon Some info from CAST about environmental issues associated with plastic bags: 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 the number of plastic shopping bags used and thrown away in this country by 500-1,000. 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.