As of January 1, 2023, Colorado has been charging 10 cents for disposable plastic bags. This is the first major step to ban single use plastic bags that contribute to plastic pollution.. Colorado is moving forward with breaking the cycle of wasteful products that end up in our ecosystem and hurt the animals and plants that the Colorado community strives to protect.
In the beginning, it was pretty clear as to why this state law was being put in place, Danny Katz, head of the progressive public interest group CoPIRG, is quoted in a 9News article about the struggle that led to the new change: “We have an estimate that Colorado goes though about 4.6 million single use plastic bags a day, and these plastic bags are going to take hundreds of years to break down if they ever will.”
The decrease of plastic bags has left an impact in the Colorado community, Mrs. Gay, the family and consumer science teacher, shared that “The new law can keep us from using a material that typically ends up in landfills, and that is a good thing because when plastic bags are completely removed in 2024, then that will protect the living things around us.”
Mr. Muth, science teacher, stated: “That’s the whole reason, getting rid of the plastic bags does help the environment, and people not buying the bags means less bags in the landfill when people get rid of them. It’s a tiny thing to do, yet it’s important to sort of push not using plastic bags to better Colorado’s environment.”
Permanent change can be a difficult thing, but Eliana Bertman, junior, has adapted to using her own bags instead of ones that damage the Earth: “My family has always been big on reusable bags, and the new state law is a big step to not using plastic bags that turn into plastic waste which helps the environment more.”