You’ll no longer find plastic water bottles for sale in Frisco starting in July 2024

News News | Aug 10, 2023

Starting next year, those who want to purchase bottled water will not find it sold in plastic bottles on the shelves of Frisco stores and those who purchase takeout food in town will not get it in containers made of polystyrene.

With a stated goal of reducing plastic waste, these provisions are all part of an ordinance the Frisco Town Council unanimously approved on second reading Tuesday, Aug. 8. The bans in the ordinance are set to take effect in 2024.

“I had lunch at a local restaurant — it was not a Frisco restaurant — and they served my lunch in a Styrofoam clamshell, they included plastic silverware and they put it in a plastic bag,” Council member Andrew Aerenson said. “And I brought it home, where I used my regular silverware, and I felt really good about what we just did.”

The town’s environmental programs staff first brought forward a conversation about an ordinance to reduce single-use plastic waste in November. The Town Council unanimously approved a first reading of the ordinance July 26, with several members of the public speaking in favor of it and a few speaking against it.

The ordinance starts by banning the provision of single-use plastic water bottles and single-use plastic cups in any building owned or leased by the town government, except in emergency cases. It also prohibits the sale of water in plastic bottles and makes it unlawful for a restaurant or food delivery service to provide a customer with plastic cutlery or other single-use items without first asking. Both of these provisions became effective with the ordinance’s passage.

The ordinance makes it unlawful for a restaurant to sell or offer for sale any product in any container made of expanded polystyrene products, or Styrofoam starting Jan. 1, 2024. It will be unlawful for any business to sell or offer for sale any single-use plastic water bottles under 1 gallon as of July 1, 2024.

The “big overarching goal, of course, is to reduce unnecessary consumption,” Frisco environmental programs coordinator Hilary Sueoka said when discussing the ordinance in July. Sueoka added the efforts to reduce single-use plastics will be supplemented with a grant program to help support small businesses through the transition.

While no members of the public spoke about the ordinance Tuesday night, back in July most of the conversation focused on the provision related to banning water sold in plastic containers. A petition against the bottle ban garnered more than 100 signatures, many of them listing Summit County addresses, claiming “this ban will harm local businesses.”

But council member Lisa Holenko questioned the claim made in the petition, which at the bottom stated, “brought to you by the Colorado Beverage Association with support from American Beverage.”

“I’m having a problem with the small business argument because — and I could be wrong — I don’t know of any small businesses that that is a substantial amount of their income,” council member Lisa Holenko said.

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Holenko added that, although businesses will still no longer be able to sell water packaged in plastic, those businesses will still be allowed to sell water in any other kind of container, including aluminum cans.

“I just don’t buy that argument,” she said. “To me, this is a no-brainer. Plastic is bad.”

In July, Mayor Hunter Mortensen explained why the ban applies to water sold in plastic bottles but not to soda, juices or other beverages sold in plastic.

“I’ve been on the phone the past few days with people who say this isn’t fair. Why not Coke? Why not liquor? Why not everything?” Mortensen said. “Because we don’t have taps for all of that in our houses, in all of our houses, in all of our small businesses, but we all have water taps.”

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A case of water bottles for sale at Loaf 'N Jug in Frisco on July 26, 2023.As a Summit Daily News reader, you make our work possible.Summit Daily is embarking on a multiyear project to digitize its archives going back to 1989 and make them available to the public in partnership with the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection. The full project is expected to cost about $165,000. All donations made in 2023 will go directly toward this project.Every contribution, no matter the size, will make a difference.