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  Home Page » News » Durango Vs Ski Towns In Bagoff

Durango vs. ski towns in 'bag-off'

Best at trading plastic and paper for reusable totes wins $5K grant

by Katie Burford
Herald Staff Writer The battle of the bags is on, and Durango is looking to best other area ski towns to prove it can reduce and reuse better than any of them.

The contest is called the 2009 Reusable Bag Challenge, which pits about 25 ski towns in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming against each other to see which will be the most ardent adopter of the waste-saving totes.

The winning community will receive a $5,000 grant from Alpine Bank to install a solar-panel system. The Durango City Council last week passed a resolution officially tossing Durango's hat in the ring.

Sponsored by the Colorado Association of Ski Towns, the competition started last year between Telluride and Aspen. Organizers estimate the towns together managed to eliminate the use of about 140,000 throw-away bags.

Locally, the bag-off is being coordinated by the Durango Rotaract Club, Rotary's youth wing.

Rotaract President Katie Zort-man, a Fort Lewis College student, said participating stores will keep a running tally of the number of reusable bags their customers use. At the beginning of September, the town with the highest reusable bag usage per capita wins.

"I'm excited with all the stores involved. I do think we have a good chance," Zortman said.

She said Rotaract had been in contact with local grocery and hardware stores and received commitments to participate from many of them. The challenge, as she is learning, is not just to get shoppers to use reusable bags, but to be sure each store's cashiers are counting them.

"They're the most integral part of the program," she said.

At City Market locations, the information already is part of the stores' bookkeeping because customers who bring their own bags get a small discount that requires cashiers to enter a code at checkout.

But at other stores, the tally will have to be made manually, which is why Zortman plans to spend this week meeting with staff at various retailers to evangelize about the importance of the count.

"I just want everyone to take ownership of the program," she said.

The resolution passed by City Council notes that the average person in a year will use about 600 plastic bags, which take 1,000 years to biodegrade and emit pollution even when recycled.

They also require millions of barrels of oil each year to produce.

Councilor Michael Rendon called the contest a "step in the right direction."

"If nothing else, it makes (residents) stop and think," he said.

Local stores have tried different approaches to wean shoppers from disposable bags. City Market and Nature's Oasis give customers a 5-cent credit for bringing a bag while Durango Natural Foods stopped providing plastic bags entirely and charges customers for paper bags. And reusable bags are available at many stores for as little as $1.

These steps pale in comparison to the whack at bags a statewide ban would have taken. Last month, state legislators voted down a bill that would have banned the use of plastic bags by large retailers. Critics argued the ban would lead to increased use of paper bags, which are said to require more energy to produce and take up more room in landfills.

No other states have passed such bans, though some, including New York, are considering them. And other states are looking at tacking on fees.

So long as the ubiquitous bags remain freely available, though, local anti-bag activists are hoping a little friendly competition will have Durango shoppers saying "neither" to the paper or plastic quandary.

kburford@durangoherald.com