An Invitation

This holiday season give a gift to our community and the planet by taking some time to help a small grassroots sustainability movement spread to more Bozeman stores- BYO Bag for Change and Boomerang Bags Bozeman.

You don’t need to send money, you just need to change your habits, and use your power of many voices, by making sure to BYO bag and taking the time to ask the manager to join the Valley of the Flowers Project’s programs which are helping us work together to become better stewards of our last best place.

If we really care about the legacy we are leaving for future generations, doesn’t it make sense that we would take this simple step to sustainability?

When we learned that plastic is something that the earth cannot digest, and that huge amounts are accumulating in our oceans, killing millions of birds and animals, and we have seen the awful photos, one wonders why we still continue to happily pay to have our stores give out bags that are not really free.

Their cost is factored into the cost of groceries and goods, so stores profit more when you BYO bag, plus we also pay in the cost to nature, including the costs of the fracking done to produce the raw materials the bags are made of, in tax dollars to cover costs of cleanups of bags throughout the landscape, but especially near our landfills, and in our waterways, and lastly, in our health, as we find microplastics and the toxins they carry biomagnifying up the food chain.

If all Montana owned stores set the bar, others stores will step up and make a commitment to voluntarily working together with customers to change an unsustainable habit that does not represent Montanans strong conservation ethic.

We can eliminate the widespread use of single-use bags if we all pull together, not just grocery stores, but Montana or western based companies like Town Pump, Owenhouse Ace Hardware, Bob Wards, Murdochs, Kenyon Noble, REI.

Please, will you accept this invitation to help us preserve the land and water for our nature’s and our children’s sake?

Stores that already give reusable bag refunds to customers, like the Co-op, or which do so in other states, like Safeway/Albertsons, also have an open invitation to join this community wide effort, which allows customers to donate their reusable bag refund to local sustainability causes. Rosauers has participated on a short term basis, and it is hoped that they will once again join the BYO Bag for Change and Boomerang Bags Bozeman programs to give their dedicated BYO Bag customers the opportunity to donate their $.05 reusable bag refund.

Seeing the hundreds of dollars in donated $.05 reusable bag refunds go to causes like the high school club working to bring solar panels to all of the schools in the district is an incentive above and beyond the good one is doing for the environment. It is a win-win in many ways.

If each of these stores were part of BYO Bag for Change and Boomerang Bags Bozeman, do you think it would inspire more stores to join?

And more folks would be inspired to start to do the right thing by becoming BYO Baggers and refusing single-use items? And maybe we could show that we

really can make a big difference one person at a time when many get involved?

We know for sure Bozeman is growing bigger. Can we help it grow better and more sustainably, as well?

Do you think our children and the animals would want us to speak up for BYO Bag for Change and Boomerang Bags Bozeman, and help these programs grow?