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Make the green cause inclusive

Dear Editor:

Thanks for posting my letter (“Moral hypocrites,” March 15, The Aspen Times). I don’t know how else I could have gotten that through to others. I quickly realized that I forgot to propose solutions. It’s rude to just rain on someone’s parade like that. Here I go:

Suggested is a negotiation with grocers in our town. Compel the grocers to sell reusable grocery bags at cost for a period of 14 days. Execute a campaign to inform residents (in relevant languages) of the availability of bags at cost, and let them know they won’t always be this price. Then tell them even more fees are coming. After 14 days, everyone that wants any should have their reusable bags. The grocers now raise the price of the reusable bags, but don’t start the plastics fee for another week. Week four: proceed with the plastics fee.



Why should the grocers sell reusable bags at cost? Well, they gave us plastic bags. Cigarette companies can’t be making profit off of nicotine patches and gum.

At the end of the day the plastics surcharge is in place and the community is happy and focused on joining the green cause. No unequal hardship. More importantly, realize that there’s more than one approach in this solution. The intervention addresses the consumer and the producer. Single-sided solutions almost never work.




Basalt, sorry, you’re not morally bankrupt. You probably didn’t know you were stratifying a public parking lot. Not everything is quite peachy though. Years have passed and the mobile home communities along the river are just as threatened by floods now as they were five years ago, when I first told you at age 15. But that’s for another time.

Mo Osorio

Basalt