The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Town attorney beginning to draft
the ordinance
[ By Mark Reaman ]A ban not only on plastic bags, but on all single-use bags, including paper bags, appears to be coming to Crested Butte. The Town Council Monday instructed the staff to begin drawing up an ordinance addressing the issue. Led by Crested Butte High School senior Benjamin Swift, the effort to regulate single-use bags will be turned into a tangible law in town, most likely this summer.
Swift has been advocating for such a ban for months and been working with a group of citizens along with council members Erika Vohman and Paul Merck. He distributed a proposal to the council Monday, May 2 and the council agreed to have town attorney John Belkin and interim town manager Bill Crank begin drafting an ordinance to ban the bags in Crested Butte.
“We would like to start phasing out plastic and paper bags this June or July by imposing a 25 cent use fee on them,” Swift explained to the council. “We would like a full ban on those bags by June or July of 2017.”
As part of the proposal, it was suggested pet waste bags in town be biodegradable instead of plastic.
Swift said Belkin was also helping his group form a non-profit organization to oversee bag management. One idea is to replace plastic grocery bags with locally sewn reusable bags that people can borrow and return after a use. That Borrow-a-Bag concept is based on an Australian idea known as Boomerang Bags.
Swift said 29 local stores had been recently surveyed and 21 of them were in favor of the bag ban.
“I want to underscore what Benjamin said about paper bags,” resident Gabi Prochaska told the council. “Single-use paper bags are also environmentally bad. They take a lot of water to produce. Really, any single-use bag has incredible environmental impact. The Borrow-a-Bag is a great idea. But I don’t want the town to ban plastic and allow paper. I would encourage the town to think about any single-use.”
At the direction of the council, Crank said he and Belkin would meet next Monday with Swift’s group to go over the details they are requesting as part of an ordinance.
“A number of other municipalities have similar ordinances we can look at,” said Merck, “and I think it should cover all single-use bags, not just plastic.”
“Let’s get some information and have a work session on the issue,” suggested mayor Glenn Michel.
“We’ve beat this to death,” countered councilman Jim Schmidt. “We don’t need a work session. Let’s have the group and the staff bring us a proposal for an ordinance and we can discuss it and amend it if necessary. I think we are all in agreement of the direction.”
That appeared to be the general feeling of the council so the staff will begin drafting an ordinance to be presented to the council early this summer.
