In goal to make Colorado free of plastic bags, some cities want to charge more

Colorado is heading toward a future free of plastic bags and in the meantime, hoping the new 10-cent bag fee is enough to convince shoppers to bring their own bags. Some cities in Colorado believe charging more could make a bigger impact.

"If you know you're going to be getting charged 25 cents for a plastic bag then you might start thinking twice," said Louisville Mayor Ashely Stolzmann.

Stolzmann says she has seen people at the store go back to their car for bags because of the fee. And she says that's exactly the point of it.

"The idea is really to get people to avoid paying, you don't want it to be so low that people are okay paying," she said.

In 2019, Louisville voters passed a 25-cent tax on plastic bags. It was an idea brought forward by a group of students to reduce use. 

"The community overwhelmingly supported it with the vote and additionally we've really tried to target families that might be most impacted by these costs."

Not only are those on government assistance exempt from the fee, Stolzmann says the city has been giving out bags at various locations since the tax was implemented in 2021.

With the new state mandated bag fee, the city could have raised it to 35 cents but opted to keep it where voters decided in 2019.

"The state has put in provisions that municipalities can enact their own regulations for fees. Our tax is a little different, so we had to create a rebate program [for businesses] on the fee to keep it at 25 cents so it wouldn't raise it to 35 cents," said Stolzmann.

While 25 cents might seem like a lot, Stolzmann says the neighboring of Boulder is considering a bag fee in the same range.

 "In the city of Boulder, they have had a 10-cent fee for a long time. They're talking about raising theirs to see if they can get some more behavior change on top of what they've already seen," she said.

60% of the revenues collected from the fee go back to the city, and 40% goes to the business. The revenue can only be applied to services associated with the bag fee.

The city of Denver for instance, which has had a 10-cent fee for the last year-and-a-half, told CBS News Colorado in an e-mail:

"Six of the 10 cents is kept by the city for uses such as administering the Fee on Disposable Bags program, public information programs on reducing the use of disposable bags and other single use products and providing free reusable bags to the community. Fund may also be spent to address the impact of single-use products on the city's environment and drainage system through community cleanups, infrastructure, and equipment."

Shoppers here can rest easy. Denver says it's not considering an increase since the state is banning plastic bags beginning 2024.

The city says data it's been collecting shows that shoppers are using reusable bags 13 percent more than they did last year but showed an increase in the use of plastic bags when comparing the third quarter of 2021 to the same period in 2022:

While cities across Colorado have already been making efforts to reduce plastic use, the private sector has been leading the charge. Walmart began the new year by removing plastic bags from Colorado stores and Natural Grocers got rid of plastic bags in 2009.

Via email, Natural Grocers said, "Since ditching disposable plastic grocery bags in 2009, we estimate that we've prevented more than 470 million plastic bags from ending up in the environment."

CBS News Colorado asked  Stolzmann if she thought Colorado could really eliminate all plastic bags by 2024.

"I think it's a really easy goal very attainable. Not lofty at all," she said without hesitation.

For the exact language of the bill or more information on the bag fee in general, click here.