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Summit County doubles reusable bag use

Caitlin Row
Summit County, CO Colorado

The number of reusable bags tallied for Summit County in the Ski Towns Reusable Bags Challenge has doubled since April, apparently showing people are still fired up about the cause.

The May/June reusable bag tally collected by the High Country Conservation Center brought Summit County’s bag-use total to 304,533. March/April numbers equaled 100,000.

“There’s still the potential to pull through to first place if our momentum increases,” said Jen Santry of High Country Conservation Center, noting that Summit County was in third place as of April.



Santry said Basalt and Winter Park/Fraser/Granby were ahead two months ago, but anything could have happened since then.

Depite having high tally numbers, Summit County must beat other communities on a per capita basis, meaning it matters how many people per capita in the community are participating in the challenge.

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“I just love that our county is so involved,” Santry said, noting that she’s recently seen lots of locals bring reusable bags to the grocery store.

The BYO Bag challenge runs through Sept. 1. The grand prize for the challenge is $10,000 toward a solar-panel installation for a local school, donated by Alpine Bank and PCL Construction. It’s up to the winning community to determine which school will get the solar panel if Summit County is victorious.

Numbers from other communities will be reported to Colorado Association of Ski Towns (CAST). Tallies we be posted this month on CAST’s facebook page: http://bit.ly/FWjtu.

Participating stores

Summit County’s participating stores include BigHorn Materials in Silverthorne, City Market in Breckenridge and Dillon, Safeway in Frisco, Skee Vue Grocery and Liquors and Joy of Sox in Breckenridge, and Vitamin Cottage Natural Grocers in Dillon.

“Wal-Mart completely dropped out,” Santry said. “… It’s a bummer that our two biggest “big box” stores -Target and Wal-Mart – won’t even participate and help our community win.”

Other stores may still join the challenge – reusable bag use will still be tallied for the next month and a half.

“Hopefully after the challenge is over, stores will carry on (encouraging reusable bag use) so it’s not just a one-time thing,” Santry said.

For more information, call Santry at at (970) 668-5703 or e-mail jen@highcountryconservation.org.

Caitlin Row can be reached at (970) 668-4633 or at crow@summitdaily.com.


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