Reusable Bag Challenge Update
With three months left in the Colorado Association of Ski Towns (CAST) Reusable Bag Challenge, organizers have announced news of newly developed partnerships. The CAST Challenge is a competition between 31 mountain towns in the Western U.S. to encourage the use of reusable shopping bags. The Challenge began on March 1 and will run until Sept.1. The prize to the winning town is a solar panel installation on their public school.
Since the competition began, local participating stores have been responsible for tallying the use of every reusable bag used or purchased by a customer at checkout. The ‘winner’ will be determined on a per capita basis by which community uses the most reusable bags during the six-month period.
CAST Challenge organizer David Allen and Alpine Bank are pleased to welcome PCL Construction Services, Inc., in joining Alpine Bank as a sponsor of the CAST Challenge. PCL is a General Contractor located in Edwards with other offices located in Denver and throughout the U.S. and Canada. Together, Alpine Bank and PCL will donate $10,000 toward a solar panel installation to the winning town. PCL also has over 3,000 reusable bags that they will distribute in the locally participating towns.
“As a mountain contractor with a focus on green building practices, we wanted to lend our support to the CAST Challenge. With our matching grant of $5,000 and handing out over 3,000 reusable bags to the local communities, we feel we can give back to the mountain communities and help ensure that the CAST Challenge is a great success,” says Andy McCord, Mountain Division Manager with PCL. The company was recently ranked No. 6 in the top 100 green contractors by Engineering News Record Magazine.
Andrew Karow, Alpine Bank regional president, has supported the initiative since its inception. “As an environmental leader, Alpine Bank is pleased that PCL has joined the grassroots effort of the CAST Reusable Bag Challenge. This is a perfect example of Alpine Bank’s leadership efforts resulting in shared opportunities within our communities to extend the influence of our Green Team well beyond our physical bank footprint.”
In addition, Independent Power Systems of Boulder has generously offered to provide the parts and labor for the solar panel system at cost. Independent Power Systems is a NABCEP certified solar electric contractor with more than a decade of experience and hundreds of successful residential and commercial installations, including Coors Field and the Bozeman Public Library in Montana. With locations in Boulder and Bozeman, Independent Power Systems offers unsurpassed technical expertise, complete customer service, and in-house design, engineering, and installation for the Rocky Mountain West.
“At IPS we work every day to improve the environment and we’re proud to be able to lend support to the CAST Challenge. We know that investing in the reduction and elimination of plastic bags will improve our quality of life and pay dividends far into the future” said Steve Schoo, marketing communications director.
According to IPS, the combined cash amount and IPS’s contribution translates to a 1.5 kilowatt solar panel system for the winning town.
“This is a fantastic opportunity for everyone involved,” says Aspen organizer Katherine Dart. “Not only are we engaging in a campaign that encourages citizen activism, but we also have the ability to reap significant rewards for our efforts. The $10,000 donation from Alpine Bank and PCL Construction and Independent Power Systems contribution is such a gift.”
Carbondale and Gunnison will also be joining Telluride, Aspen, Mountain Village, Snowmass Village, Basalt, Silverthorne, Dillon, Breckenridge, Frisco, Granby, Winter Park, Fraser, Avon, Crested Butte/Mt. Crested Butte, Durango, Eagle, Edwards, Estes Park, Grand Lake, Gypsum, Silverton, Steamboat Springs, Gunnison and Vail. Jackson Hole, Park City and the Idaho communities of Sun Valley, Ketchum, Hailey and Bellevue are also participating.
So far nearly all of the participating towns have reported bag tallies for the months of March and April. Since the launch of the Challenge on March 1, participating towns have eliminated an estimated 792,000 disposable shopping bags.
Environmental concern around issues such as litter and degradation of resources is the primary impetus behind the CAST Challenge. In the U.S alone, annual production of disposable grocery bags emits nearly 4 million tons of CO2-equivalent. An estimated 4 billion plastic bags worldwide end up as litter every year—enough that, tied end to end, the bags could circle the Earth 63 times.
Community activism and cost reduction are two other reasons the towns have deemed the use of disposable bags an important issue to address.
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Reader Comments:
Hopefully, Seattle will lead the way in our state for eliminating the use of plastic bags. My son recently got back from Kenya, and he said that plastic bags are not recycled, and are everywhere. They are even seen on the savanna, and in the Game parks. We need to reduce the need for plastic products in general, and eliminating plastic bags is a good start. We live in a global world, but it starts at home.