Telluride Bag Challenge Rides Again
1 comment so farA few months ago, we reported the results of a friendly little wager between eco-conscious mountain towns Telluride and Aspen: which town could cut back more on plastic by shopping with reusable bags? The contest went on from Memorial Day to Labor Day, and Telluride’s win netted a prize of new solar panels for the town’s high school. Over the course of the challenge, the two towns combined managed to cut back on almost 150,000 disposable plastic bags. What a feat!
Now it’s a new year, and the mountain towns are gearing up for a rematch. Word of this competition really got around, awesomely enough, and this time around a whopping 25 towns in Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah have gotten on board to take the new and extended shopping bag challenge.
After the Telluride/Aspen challenge ended on a positive note, Dave Allen, who spearheaded the effort with Aspen’s Nathan Ratledge, started making phone calls to town managers and mayors of every town that’s a member of the Colorado Association of Ski Towns, trying to gin up interest for a new and bigger challenge.
“The success of the Telluride/Aspen plastic bag challenge was the driving force of taking this next step,” he said. “Basically, my objectives were to contact each of the towns … and just plant that seed.”
First, Breckenridge agreed to join. Then the rest of Summit County followed suit, and a flood of confirmations came in. Basalt and Silverthorne, Granby, Grand Lake, Winter Park and well as Park City, Utah, Jackson Hole, Wyo., and Ketchum, Idaho, are just a few that will be participating.
“It’s been just a matter of building momentum,” Allen said.
The contest will be running from March 1st to September 1st this time around, and the prize is the same — the gift of solar panel energy for a public school to the winning town. Let’s wish each and every town good luck on the contest! In a race like this, just signing up makes them all winners in our book.
Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 at 12:06 pm and is filed under The Daily. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
[...] reported a couple of times before on the friendly ski town reusable bag competition going on between Telluride and Aspen, but things over there just keep getting better. According to Vail Daily, three more towns have [...]