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The City of Boulder is exploring policies and other approaches to reduce single-use plastics in our community, and we want to hear from you.
If you live, work or play in Boulder and you care about reducing waste, your experiences and ideas can help inform what comes next.
Single-use plastics contribute to waste and can be difficult to manage once they are thrown away. But their impacts extend beyond litter: research increasingly links microplastic exposure to potential health concerns. As a community that has long taken action to reduce waste and protect environmental and public health, Boulder can explore new approaches to reduce single-use plastics and prevent them from entering our waste stream in the first place.
In 2021, Colorado passed the Plastic Pollution Reduction Act (PPRA), establishing statewide requirements for certain single-use plastic products and expanded polystyrene (Styrofoam®). As of July 1, 2024, Colorado law allows local governments to adopt additional or more stringent policies to reduce plastic waste. This allows Boulder to explore local approaches to reducing single-use plastics in our community.
If you missed it, our window of engagement is still open. Please take one of the following questionnaires:
This isn’t Boulder’s first effort to better understand plastic use in our community.
For the past two years, the city has hosted the Boulder Plastic Count, a weeklong community challenge that invited participants to track their personal plastic use. The annual count helps build awareness about how much plastic we use in our everyday lives while generating community-level data and insights that can help inform the city’s waste reduction efforts.
Now, as we begin exploring future policies, we’re building on that work by asking community members to share their experiences, concerns and ideas
