3 minute read
Community New green initiative
LIVING GREEN, LIKE A LOCAL
BY ERIN SPILLANE
Did you know that in Telluride and Mountain Village you can’t let your car idle for more than 30 seconds? That you are required to secure your outdoor trash cans sufficiently to prevent bear break-ins? And that dog-owners must pick up their dog’s poop or face a fine? Yep, all are local ordinances.
Now, thanks to a collaboration between the Town of Telluride Ecology Commission, the Town of Mountain Village’s Green Team, San Miguel County and the Telluride Tourism Board, there is a new initiative that aims to raise awareness of and promote compliance with these environment- and wildlife-friendly measures.
Titled Live Like a Local, the initiative also advocates a number of cherished local customs, like eschewing single-use plastic bottles for reusable ones (filled with pure, delicious tap water), robust recycling, leave no trace on trails and conscientious water conservation. The campaign relies on a series of well-designed, colorful icons, each with a friendly, but important, message aimed at education and encouraging compliance. ‘THE MAIN GOAL IS FOR Jonathan Greenspan, who is a member of both the Ecology Commission and the Green Team, COMMUNITY MEMBERS points out that these ordinances and practices AND VISITORS TO SEE are a reflection of the community’s priorities. THIS MESSAGING AS A “It’s the one commonality — the beauty of this CONSISTENT AND COHESIVE place, plain and simple. It’s what brought us all WHOLE, AND TO CHANGE here. Protecting that with [Live Like a Local] BEHAVIORS.’ reflects the values of our community, the culture we want to promote and the behaviors we want Kiersten Talbert to encourage.”
While these green practices — and programs to promote them — have been around for a while, Greenspan notes, Live Like a Local represents a fresh, coordinated approach with buy-in from the area’s environmental groups and support from the tourism board, as well as the poster-, sticker- and social media-friendly icons, use of QR codes and follow-up to measure outcomes.
Says Ecology Commission chair Kiersten Talbert, “Our intention with this campaign is to streamline and synthesize our messaging. The main goal is for community members and visitors to see this messaging as a consistent and cohesive whole, and to change behaviors.”
Education is a priority too. Ecology Commission member Kathy Green, for instance, highlights the ordinance relating to trash cans and dumpsters. Many don’t realize it, but carelessness with trash means danger for bears. The bears get used to eating human food and consequently turn up their noses at foraging for their usual natural foodstuffs. This in turn can cause them to lose their wariness of people, with unhappy potential for property damage and human encounters that >>
can lead to the bear being killed.
Says Green, “We want to try to educate people so bears aren’t compromised for the rest of the lives. We need to figure out how to coexist with the bears since they were here first.”
Greenspan emphasizes that Live Like a Local is the start of a long-term effort based on lots of highly visual reinforcement that he likens to speed-limit signs that appear over and over again on a road: “by the third or fourth sign, you’re going to know what the speed limit is.”
He adds, “We’ll be handing out biodegradable stickers, putting up banners in both towns and covering the backs of the [Covid-related] signs coming into town with these icons. We are really sticking these in front of people to reinforce a culture and behavior in all of us to help preserve and enhance our local environment, so everybody — everybody — can enjoy it.
