CBCS student leads charge to ban plastic bags in Crested Butte

Council will consider soon

by Dawne Belloise

With the smile and enthusiasm of someone not yet tainted or daunted by the world, Benjamin Swift, a Crested Butte Community School senior, is determined to make a difference in the quality of his local environment and the world.

Google searching the combined words “environment,” “disaster” and “plastic bags” will lead to a plethora of horrific images and statistics in every country, choking out both marine and land life and clogging up landfills and oceans. Plastic is a by-product of consumer convenience and the influential plastics industry is the same as the oil industry since plastic is a petroleum product. The raw truth is, plastic is an environmental disaster that grows larger every day. There are immense swirling garbage patches the size of islands caught in the ocean currents and the debris is as indigestible as poison for animals and marine life, not to mention that wildlife gets caught and entangled in its snare. It doesn’t go away because it doesn’t biodegrade.

Swift’s environmental activism started a couple of years ago when he was moved by a documentary his 10th grade biology class watched—in his words, a really powerful film, End of the Line.

“It was about the global overfishing crisis, how the oceans are completely over-ravaged by irresponsible commercial fishing practices.”

There were many takeaways from the movie but one of the things consumers can do is eat lower on the food chain, meaning smaller species of fish like sardines, mackerel or salmon as opposed to tuna or swordfish. The basic concept is, if you eat lower in the food chain, the fish that are eating phytoplankton or plants, rather than the larger fish that are eating the smaller fish, then there’s a more direct energy flow from plants and sunlight to the human eating the fish, so there’s less wasted energy,” Swift explains.

After watching the movie he started a website, eatsmallfish.org, with the intention of educating and influencing people to eat lower on food chain. “I feel the solution is to be knowledgeable about whether the products you are eating are sustainable,” Swift says. He directs those interested to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium’s seafood watch list of what’s green to eat and what’s not. “With eatsmallfish.org, the fish that I mentioned, like mackerel, sardines, etc., pertain to the oceans, but trout is considered a small fish too if you’re thinking of the mountains,” Swift assures local anglers.

His interest in banning single-use plastic bags goes hand-in-hand with growing up in the outdoor lifestyle of Crested Butte and his drive to protect the place he loves. “The plastic bag is something that I’ve felt is wasteful, useless and unnecessary. It irked me for quite a few years, especially after I watched Bag It,” Swift says of the documentary that exposes the environmental catastrophe that plastic has caused worldwide.

“It’s narrated by a man from Telluride who explores all the plastic bag issues, and exposes that plastic bags are really superfluous, clog oceans, are eaten by ocean life, and it extends to not just bags but all plastic packaging and materials. The bags are just the starting off point,” the teen says.

Swift’s local goal is to get a town ordinance, a regulation banning single-use plastic bags, and he points out that there are already eight towns in Colorado who have regulations or outright bans. “My ultimate goal is to have an ordinance, to have heavy regulation or a ban in Crested Butte and if that could extend to Gunnison, that would be even better.”

Swift admits that perhaps the impact of plastic is not super-apparent on a local level, unless you go down to the landfill outside of Gunnison, where plastic bags litter the sagebrush all around the landfill.

When the young activist went to that landfill last fall to take photos, he was turned away at the gate; the attendant told him he couldn’t photograph the garbage area because they had a media policy. “I couldn’t get past the gate but I saw plastic bags all around the general vicinity. Inmates from the Gunnison jail are brought in occasionally to clean up the wayward bags, but the bags in the landfill, any plastic bags thrown away, aren’t really disposed of. They go to the landfill but they’re not kept out of the natural environment.”

Swift, in his research, found that plastic does technically break down but it doesn’t decompose. Rather than biodegrading, plastic photo-degrades, which, because of the UV rays of the sun, breaks plastic down into tiny particles that can get into the oceans and marine life, small chunks of plastic that fish and aquatic life can consume. It all adds to the toxicity level present in sea life.

There are much bigger chunks as well that find their way into the sea; gyres, a circular current in the ocean, catch and hold not only these microplastic particles, but larger plastic items like bottles, caps, whole bags. Any sort of trash gets caught in these gyres and creates islands of plastic trash such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Another of the serious issues created by plastic debris is that in some areas plastic outnumbers plankton. “When sea birds or fish stomachs or marine stomachs are opened you’ll find toxins and plastics and unpleasant chemicals and waste,” Swift says.

Swift sees the plastic dilemma as a complex issue with a relatively simple solution; however, he feels that there are big players involved in the continuing cycle. For example, oftentimes plastic is “down-cycled,” which means a bottle is recycled into a new product that can’t be recycled again because consumers, and therefore manufacturers, want pure plastic to make perfectly clear products. Swift feels that the American Chemistry Council (ACC) and the plastic manufacturers the ACC represent have ties to big oil corporations that want to continue to capitalize on their products.

The products to be down-cycled tend to go to Asia, where underpaid workers sort through it for a melt-down and recycle process. “It’s better than nothing,” Swift says, “but it’s melted in open vats so all the fumes go into the atmosphere and that’s not good for climate change and air quality.”

Swift outlines three facets of his program—recycle, reusable bags, and education. “I created a logo in conjunction with other Crested Butte Community School students and printed it on reusable bags,” which tout a “Plastic Bag Free CB” moniker.

“Now customers can make a donation, a recommended $1 to $3, for purchase at four stores around town and they get a reusable bag to use in place of plastic. And locally, if a townie or tourist forgets their bags they can borrow a reusable one and return it to one of the four stores. So far Chopwood Mercantile, The Mountain Store, Mountain Earth, and Donita’s are all participating in the program but hopefully more will come on board. We’re looking into sponsorship where the business can get their name on the bag,” Swift says.

He notes that the funding for the original purchase of the 350 reusable bags came from GenerationOn, a granting organization for youth community projects. Swift applied and received their $500 grant, which got the program off the ground.

 

In his effort to educate people about the destructive nature of plastic bags, Swift has written some letters to the editor as well as promoted showings of the movie Bag It, which initially motivated him to action. There’ll be another showing of that documentary on Sunday, February 21, 6:30 p.m. at the Ann Zugelder library in Gunnison.

“It’s inspiring and fun to watch. Many of the pictures can be on the depressing side, because it is, but Jeb Berrier [the narrator] is a very comical character and he brings an element of fun to the movie, and you actually feel that the audience is more receptive and more empowered to act rather than being solely overwhelmed,” Swift says.

Swift states that according to the National Resources Defense Council, the average American family takes home 1,500 plastic shopping bags every year. Americans use and dispose 100 billion single-use plastic shopping bags yearly. And those numbers don’t include plastic product packaging. America’s 100 billion plastic bag habit requires 12 million barrels of oil a year.

“Something that gives me hope is that large cities like Los Angeles have a fee on plastic bags. That’s a town of millions,” Swift says and feels, “and if they can do it, it should be no problem for us, and really, we have no excuse not to. San Francisco, LA, Chicago, and New York all have restrictions and Hawaii is the first state to have an outright ban on single-use plastic bags.”

He’s also adamant that the problem is totally unnecessary and can be easily remedied, “It takes a very small lifestyle change to start using reusable bags, or for that matter, not buying bottled water or just bringing your own coffee mug to the coffee shop. Plastic bags are such a big problem, I find it pretty ridiculous that humans can’t take some relatively small steps to improve the situation.”

On a positive note, Swift is encouraged. “There’s been lots of enthusiasm about the Plastic Bag Free CB program so I’m hopeful it will continue after I graduate. I definitely plan on continuing the fight with environmental issues, climate change being of paramount importance, whether I’m in Crested Butte or elsewhere. Wherever I am, I’ll continue.”

For questions or information and to get involved or donate email benjamin@eatsmallfish.org and there’s a Facebook page “Plastic Bag Free CB.” You are encouraged to email or call your Town Council members to relay your feelings on a proposal for Plastic Bag Free CB.