About the TNCC/SMA Plastic Bag Initiative:

The New Community Coalition has partnered with Sheep Mountain Alliance to initiate a plastic bag reduction campaign in Telluride and Mountain Village. Our goal is to recreate how our community thinks about consumption, and it will start with promoting a European approach to shopping.  Simply, to take a reusable shopping bag with you to do your shopping. 

The environmental impact of 5 trillion plastic bags discarded annually around the world can no longer be ignored.  One local grocery store estimates they give away 650,000 plastic grocery bags just in our community. Reducing and eliminating plastic shopping bags seems to be one of the easier things we can do as stewards of this planet. It is therefore imperative that we ask our respective town governments and local businesses to aggressively discourage the unnecessary and excessive use of plastic bags.

Plastic bags never biodegrade. They photodegrade, meaning they simply break down into smaller pieces of plastic. This fact has had a devastating impact on marine ecosystems across the globe. Hundreds of thousand of sea turtles, whales and other marine mammals die every year from eating discarded plastic bags mistaken for food. Another study determined that 82 of 144 bird species examined contained small plastic debris in their stomachs, and in many species the incidence of ingestion exceeded 80% of the individuals.

Our campaign is underway.  We are working closely with the Telluride and Mountain Village Town Councils, local business owners, and the lodging community.  We are also collaborating with other communities in the Colorado.

We can painlessly 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 350-500.  Of all of the lifestyle changes we will need to make to exist in a truly self-sustaining ecological society, this will be a relatively easy one. Everyone can make it a habit to eliminate plastic bags from our lives. Throw a few reusable bags in your car or leave them next to your door because it is easy to forget.

This information was provided by David Allen of Sheep Mountain Alliance