Your support for the proposed Plastic Pollution Reduction Act will heighten the likelihood of the bill continuing through the House of Representatives and being implemented as early as 2022. Public support means everything!

The Plastic Pollution Reduction Act aims to:

• Ban the distribution of polystyrene (styrofoam) from restaurants
• Eventually ban the usage of styrofoam in schools (by 2024)
• Implement a fee for the usage of plastic or paper carryout bags. 
  • Revenue gained from bag fees will be used in your local county/municipality where they’ll be encouraged to use it to for administrative/enforcement costs, recycling, composting, or other waste diversion programs or related outreach or education activities.
• Allow local governments to apply more stringent restrictions and implement the laws with higher fines

The passage of this bill would mean far less plastic waste production in our state. Colorado currently goes through about 4.6 million plastic bags and 1.2 million styrofoam cups per day! With this comes a plethora of extremely harmful effects on the environment and the individuals using these plastics.

Plastic bags and polystyrene break down into microplastics after they are used, ultimately polluting natural environments and harming wildlife because they are so frequently littered. With this, because there is no true way to recycle them, single-use plastics have never been a sustainable option of packaging and the only solution is to eliminate them entirely. Additionally, exposure to styrofoam has been categorized as a carcinogen. So its continued use in the food industry has potential to cause very harmful effects on consumers.

Conclusively, although plastic is often the easiest, cheapest, and most logical option for businesses to use, we won’t stand for it anymore due to the extreme and irreversible cost on the environment and the health of the public. 

Sign for a greener Colorado!