Telluride Says “Bag It” to Disposable Plastic

Win A Set of Washable Fabric Sandwich Bags to Replace Ziploc Baggies

Telluride is trying to stay at the top of the food chain when it comes to eco-consciousness. The town staged a “plastic bag challenge,” a contest against other ski towns asking consumers to choose reusable shopping bags instead of the disposable plastic ones, and is currently contemplating a 25-cent tax on the disposable bags. This spring, Mountainfilm in Telluride lauded Suzan Beraza’s film “Bag It,” an environmental documentary about the impacts of plastics, with the festival’s prestigious audience award. The film encouraged people to take steps to eliminate their use of disposable plastic containers of all kinds, which are clogging up landfills, choking our oceans and waterways and leaching cancer-causing chemicals like BPA (Bisphenol A) and phthalates into our food and other products.

There are all kinds of disposable plastics on which we’ve grown to depend, but one of the most ubiquitous is the sandwich baggie. “Ziploc” has become a household word and over 20 million sandwich bags from school lunches end up in U.S. landfills every day, according to a company called 3GreenMoms. These three moms decided to do something about it: They created LunchSkins, reusable, washable fabric bags that are food-safe, dishwasher-safe and come in vibrant colors and patterns.  LunchSkins reduce waste and save money, because they can be reused hundreds of times, and according to 3GreenMoms, they are a healthy choice: “Food just tastes better in a pastry bag.”

Two of the three founding moms, Cris Bourelly and Jennifer Stoller, passed through Telluride on their way cross-country shortly out of college in the late 1980s.  They said the beauty of what they encountered here while camping, hiking and climbing that summer inspired them to live a greener life. 3GreenMoms has agreed to give one of our lucky readers/fans a set of one sandwich bag and one snack bag. All you have to do is click “like” on this post on our Facebook page or make a quick comment below on this page to be entered in the giveaway. “We are excited to help others reduce plastic waste and contribute to the greening of Telluride by using LunchSkins instead of single-use plastic baggies,” says Bourelly.