Colorado Puts the Kibosh to Plastic Bags. What's Next?

July 9, 2021 BigPivots.com Issue No. 41 Colorado puts the The numbers cited by CoPIRG defy the imagination. The group estimates 1.2 million foam cups get distributed each day kibosh to plastic in Colorado and 4.6 million plastic bags. Those numbers seem unbelievable. But bags. What’s next? then I reflect on a trip I took in May to hear the meadowlarks sing amid the sand hills of by Allen Best northeastern Colorado. It’s a sparsely Colorado has a law signed Tuesday populated area, neighbors sometimes a afternoon by Gov. Jared Polis in the shade mile apart. Even so, along the border of a tree outside of the Governor’s between Phillips-Yuma counties, plastic Mansion. Beginning in 2024, stores can no bags snagged on the barbed-wire fences longer give out either single-use plastic bags fluttered in the spring breeze. or foam containers such as for coffee and Everywhere we go, from the borrow other food products. pits of graveled county roads on the Great With this law, called the Plastic Plains to our city streets to the mountain Pollution Reduction Act, Colorado became rivers, we see the evidence of our mindless the 10th state to take action against single- devotion to the easy packaging of plastic. use plastic bags and the 8th against foam. It This plastic is not a climate change is the first interior state in both cases, problem, per se. But it is concurrent with according to the Colorado Public Interest our proliferating use of fossil fuels and Research Group, an advocacy group that acceleration in greenhouse gas emissions. was a key advocate for the legislation. Pew Charitable Trusts say that production Danny Katz, the executive director of soared from 2 million metric tons in 1950 to CoPIRG, also noted that Colorado is the first 348 million metric tons in 2017—an amount state to repeal a law that denied local that would double by 2040 if no changes governments the ability to regulate plastic are made. pollution in their communities. This cleared Mountain resort towns led Colorado’s the way for Denver to institute its ban on push against proliferation of plastic. free plastic shopping bags beginning July 1. Telluride was first, in 2010, with a law that Rep. Lisa Cutter, a Democrat from precluded distribution of free plastic bags at Jefferson County and a prime sponsor of its two grocery stores (it now has a third). the bill, called it a “great first step.” This followed a contest among ski towns to Environmental groups agreed that the work attempt voluntary reductions. is far from done. Further legislative efforts There was opposition, says Stu Fraser, may attempt to suppress the large amounts then the mayor, but the council was united. of plastic used in packaging and which Ginny Fraser, the former mayor’s wife, says cannot be easily recycled. there does seem to be less plastic in the Food Market. And presumably there’s a gas town. station in Julesberg or Craig that is Others followed Telluride in the next individually owned and not part of a chain several years: Aspen, Boulder, that won’t have to comply with the ban on Breckenridge, Carbondale, Crested Butte, plastic-foam coffee cups. and Vail. But City Market/King Soopers, Safeway, Basalt also banned single-use plastic Walmart and dozens and dozens of other bags, but the ban was overturned by voters. chain stores—yes, they will have to comply. Aspen’s ban was contested in a legal case State Rep. Alex Valdez, a Democrat that went to the Colorado Supreme Court, from Denver, said at the bill-signing at the but the ban was upheld because the fees Governor’s Mansion that HB21-1162, of collected for distribution of paper bags which he was a prime sponsor, that plastic were earmarked for program costs. As such, is not just a matter of visual pollution. the town said it was a fee, not a new tax. “Plastic ends up in the food you eat,” he Justices agreed. said, describing the measure as an effort to The bill allows exemptions within stores protect long-term human health. and also the types of stores. Plastic bags The bill was adopted along mostly used for apples and oranges, for example, partisan lines. Even those Republican are exempted. So are bags used by legislators who supported some clean pharmacists to deliver medication. There energy legislation bills—Senators Kevin are other exemptions as well. Priola of Brighton and Don Coram of Some stores are also exempted. Those Montrose, and Rep. Marc Catlin of with two stores or fewer in Colorado do not Montrose—opposed the bill. have to comply with the law. That means Among those standing behind Gov. the community-owned grocery store in Jared Polis as he delivered his remarks was Walsh, a town in southeastern Colorado, the mayor of Avon, Sarah Smith Hymes. will not have to comply. Ditto for the Avon adopted a ban on free plastic bags unique grocery store and deli in that went into effect in 2018. Town leaders southeastern Colorado called the Dolores wanted to push further to take on 2 disposable polystyrene foam products, such as are commonly used to package fast Is plastic in drinking foods. Styrofoam is one branded polystyrene product. This bill addresses water a problem? that. Avon gets its water from the Eagle “It really went smoothly,” she said of River. Is the water polluted by plastic? Are Avon’s action in an interview after the bill you ingesting tiny bits of plastic when signing. She credited Aspen with crafting a drinking a glass of water? path but also Vail in helping normalize the Upper Eagle River Water and Sanitation idea of carrying reusable bags into grocery District, the water provider for Avon, has stores. “It didn’t take very long for people never tested for microplastics, nor is it part to begin taking bags when walking into of the sampling and monitoring prescribed stores.” by the Safe Drinking Water Act, reports Her professional career, which included Diane Johnson, public affairs manager for working in China, where she spent many the district. Plastics have not been a part of years selling American processing and the “emerging contaminants” of the packaging machinery, made her aware of Environmental Protection Agency. plastic and other pollution on a global scale. “As far as drinking water treatment, our In Avon, where she settled down to rear facilities use sedimentation and filtration (in a family, she became cognizant of plastic Avon) and microfiltration (in Edwards), bags plugging up storm drains and of plastic which would seem to be sufficient at litter along the Eagle River and tributary removing any microplastics coming in from creeks. the river and entering the drinking water supply,” she reports. “Our understanding is that microplastics are more of an issue in large lakes and the oceans where they can accumulate over time,” she says. Of greater issue are the microplastics entering the wastewater stream from homes and businesses. Microplastics can come from synthetic fibers in clothes cleansed by washing machines and small, “It was on my mind for many, many exfoliating beads in many face and body years,” she said. washes. Avon is a town of 6,500 people, small by Research reported in a 2020 paper conventional standards—except that it’s in published in a Royal Society of Chemistry’s a resort area. It has a Home Depot, a Super journal found that various techniques in Walmart, and a good-sized City Market. The wastewater treatment can remove proliferation of plastic, she says, impacts microplastics with a high level of efficacy. the community far more than the As for polystyrene and single-use plastic population alone would suggest. bags, they do not appear to affect Upper Like Cutter, the state representative, Eagle Valley’s water operations. “They Smith Hymes believes there is far more could get caught on our bar screen on our work to do. There’s just too much plastic intakes in the Eagle River, but we don’t packaging and no way to recycle it. think this has ever occurred or been an issue for us,” said Johnson. 3 There Will Be Fire by Allen Best Then embers vaulted across two miles Big Pivots® of treeless tundra at the Continental Divide, raining into the Estes Valley, at the eastern Colorado’s scariest wildfire in 2020 gate to Rocky Mountain National Park. was not its largest. East Troublesome Nothing like this had ever occurred in shocked because of its modern Colorado history. sprint and then its leap. East Troublesome was Eight months later, It grew by 87,000 acres unlike any other fire in Colorado again had in a fiery dash across Colorado. When will a something extraordinary, a the headwaters of the record-smashing heat wave Colorado River and past megafire hit Vail, or in mid-June. Two Colorado Grand Lake, most of Aspen or some other towns, Alamosa and Cortez, that in just a couple headwater community? had six consecutive days of hours. Smoke plumes record high temperatures. rose 40,000 feet. The Leadville, Grand Lake, winds, variously estimated at 50 to 100 Dillon, and Del Norte had five straight days mph, were strong enough to bend over of record highs. In Vail, one town employee lodgepole pines. reported having gone to South Carolina to see a son—and being shocked to find the 4 heat was no worse than that of Eagle Before arriving in Vail in 2014, Novak County. saw a progression during his 30-year career It’s not just new temperature records, on the West Coast.

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