Winter Park, Fraser, and Granby, who competed together Colorado Association of Ski Towns (CAST) Reusable Bag Challenge, took the runner-up position, while the town of Basalt won.

Summit County took third.

A $1,000 cash award sponsored by Safeway will be issued to the runner-up and is tentatively planned to go toward the creation of a plastic bag-recycling program.

The six-month challenge ended Sept. 1. Collectively, participating towns eliminated the consumption of an estimated 5.3 million single-use disposable bags.

“It's been a great success,” said David Allen, the program's creator. “The results are better then I projected, and the project has received some impressive attention. Media outlets have covered the CAST Challenge as far away as Italy.”

The CAST Reusable Bag Challenge was a competition among 31 mountain towns in the West to encourage the use of reusable shopping bags and raise awareness of the economic, environmental, and social impacts of single-use shopping bags. The Challenge began on March 1. The prize to the winning town is a solar panel installation on their public school.

Alpine Bank and PCL Construction sponsored the voluntary program to the tune of $10,000 toward the solar panel installation.

Participating towns included Telluride, Aspen, Mountain Village, Snowmass Village, Basalt, Carbondale, Gunnison, Silverthorne, Dillon, Breckenridge, Frisco, Granby, Winter Park, Fraser, Avon, Crested Butte/Mt. Crested Butte, Durango, Eagle, Edwards, Estes Park, Grand Lake, Gypsum, Silverton, Steamboat Springs, Gunnison and Vail. Jackson Hole, Wyo., Park City, Utah, Sun Valley, Ketchum, Hailey and Bellevue, Idaho, also participated.