A host of businesses in Denver and across the state are policing themselves as part of a conservation movement gaining momentum across the country. Seattle instituted a citywide ban on plastic straws and utensils in restaurants early this month. Days later, Starbucks announced that it will replace disposable straws with recyclable, straw-less lids by 2020. Marriott International, Hyatt Hotels, Hilton Hotels, American Airlines and university food-service provider Bon Appetite are following suit, phasing out the plastic straws that are too small and lightweight to be easily recycled and transitioning to more sustainable alternatives.
“A lot of folks have been moving toward that for a long time,” said Carolyn Livingston, communications director of the Colorado Restaurant Association. “Trying to be a hospitable organization is what restaurants are all about. As customers want more sustainable options, restaurants are moving toward providing them.” The restaurants also are switching to plastic substitutes made of paper, or copper straws. Most establishments keep a small inventory of plastic straws on hand, however, to accommodate disabled customers for whom they work best.
The straw debate is the latest piece of the larger environmental conversation that began decades ago with recycling and more recently focused on plastic bags. While they are responsible for only a small percentage of overall plastics waste, they are seen by activists as symbols of an increasingly polluted world.
In recent years, Colorado communities — most of them mountain towns such as Aspen, Crested Butte and Vail — have implemented a 10- to 20-cent disposable bag fee or banned single-use plastic grocery bags entirely. Since Aspen put a paper bag fee in place six years ago, it has generated nearly $300,000 and Liz Chapman, Aspen’s senior environmental health specialist, said the early grumbling has subsided. The same has held true in the other mountain communities.
Read the full story at https://www.denverpost.com/2018/07/21/colorado-restaurants-plastic-straws/.