Highlights:

• At a conference last week, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock jokingly claims that the city will soon ban plastic bags.
• The Mayor went on to say that he was in discussions with an unnamed city council member to evaluate bag bans and fees.  Mayor's primary concern is that a ban or tax would be regressive and impact lower income families more.  
• After the event, Denver Westword.com obtained the following quote from the Mayor's office that stated the city was not actively pursuing bag fees right now. 
• City councilewomen, Susan Shepherd, was much more enthusiastic when asked about a potential bag fee or bag ban.

From the article:

They clog up waterways. They end up in landfills, where they take thousands of years to break down. And they kill turtles and dolphins. Plastic bags of the sort used in grocery stores are a top enemy for environmentalists, and Westword has learned that some Denver officials are considering policies that would discourage folks from using them -- possibly even a ban.

Now all you plastic bag-hating, dolphin-loving folks out there, don't get too excited. From what we can tell, the city is in the very early stages of researching this -- and a possible fee tied to plastic bags at this point seems much more likely than an outright ban, although nothing is certain at this stage.

We first got wind of this possibility last week, when Denver Mayor Michael Hancock spoke at a Colorado Municipal League conference in Breckenridge. While there, he spent a good chunk of time praising the early impacts of his controversial camping ban. But the conversation during the luncheon took a turn when Sweetie Marbury, a member of the Durango City Council, stood up and asked Hancock when Denver was going to get on the right side of the plastic bag issue and ban them.