The Roundup | Bauhaus, Bayer and the recycling symbol

In the last week as Aspen Journalism, we had the privilege of publishing work from Tim Cooney and Andrew Travers, telling stories relevant to Aspen History.  

Cooney, whose local history coverage for AJ spans volumes and who last summer authored a three-part series on the experience of the Northern Utes when white settlers arrived, now takes us through the many layers of Herbert Bayer’s Aspen legacy with a piece published on Sunday, and in a two-day run in the Aspen Daily News. Bayer, Cooney writes, made pivotal contributions to midcourse Aspen that have shaped what town is today. The Austrian-born Bayer, in turn, was influenced by his experience serving in World War I and then being drawn to the modernist Bauhaus design school where, from the rubble of the war’s catastrophe, a generation was seeking to build a new idealism. After fleeing the next world war, Bayer landed in Aspen in 1948 and was the go-to designer helping implement the vision provided by Chicago businessman Walter Paepcke and a new elite class seeking to create a mind-body-spirit sanctuary here. Trying to take in the depth and breadth of Bayer’s multimedia portfolio can be like “trying to read too many novels at the same time,” Cooney writes, but we distilled it down to just 6,000 words.

Nicely complementing the Bayer deep-dive, Travers, in his fourth story for AJ, checks in with one of those who-would-have-known-it tales about how the ubiquitous recycling symbol was the product of a contest put on at the 1970 International Design Conference at Aspen and judged by a panel that included Bayer. Travers unpacks how the contest and the conference — sponsored by the late Paepcke’s Container Corp. of America — were a product of their time as the environmental movement started going mainstream. The symbol itself is emblematic of how it’s been a perilous journey since, as Travers reports, particularly in how the image has been co-opted by the plastics industry and affixed to packaging that is not necessarily recyclable. The controversy speaks to the habit of “deflecting attention from corporate and government responsibility,” according to a source cited in the piece, in a manner that emphasizes “the idea that individual Americans are personally culpable for pollution and other environmental problems.” Travers will be moderating a discussion with Gary Anderson, the symbol’s original designer, and former city of Aspen waste reduction specialist Liz Chapman, who is now the executive director of Recycle Colorado, at an event at the Pitkin County Library on Monday at 6 p.m. (space is limited with an RSVP required here).

And in case you missed it, be sure to check out our water desk’s landmark project breaking down how water is used in one of the West’s most remarkable working-river basins. Released on Monday, and shared earlier this week in a bonus edition of our Runoff newsletter, Water Desk Editor Heather Sackett and Laurine Lassalle, AJ data specialist, go ditch by ditch on the Crystal River, tracking how the biggest diverters in the basin use water. The package is anchored by an investigation, published this week in The Aspen Times and the Glenwood Springs Post Independent, aided by OpenET satellite data, into why just a fraction of all that diverted water is actually used by crops.  

Can you hear us now?

If it seems like you’ve been hearing more of Aspen Journalism on the radio, it’s because we were on Aspen Public Radio twice this week. Broadcast journalist Kaya Williams interviewed AJ contributor Elizabeth Stewart-Severy about her recent report on the closed ski-area boundary hemming in the new Hero’s terrain on Aspen Mountain, and how it’s changing backcountry access, for Wednesday morning’s APR newscast. And Eleanor Bennett gave us a 13-minute segment with Paul Andersen on his “in search of community” series that has been underway since December, and continues later this month. Hear Andersen tie together the series that probes the history of the social concept of community in the Roaring Fork Valley and seeks answers for how this unique, disparate but yet-still connected 100-mile corridor of small towns from Aspen to Parachute adds up to the place that so many call home or are drawn to. 

And speaking of Aspen Public Radio, we are proud to announce they have signed on to co-sponsor, along with The Arts Campus at Willits, our April 9 event at TACAW where, in partnership with the Colorado Water Trust, we present an expert panel discussion titled “Hanging in the Balance: Competing Needs for Water in the West.” Think of it as a live version of our water desk’s reporting, moderated by Sackett, that will explore the challenges and opportunities presented by our collective need to stretch a limited resource. Be sure to RSVP for the free event here. 

That’s all for this edition of The Roundup. As always, thank you for reading, and supporting, Aspen Journalism’s nonprofit newsroom.

– Curtis Wackerle
Editor and Executive Director
Aspen Journalism

The recycling symbol’s Aspen roots

College student Gary Anderson’s iconic ‘chasing arrows’ logo was selected at 1970 International Design Conference at Aspen

By Andrew Travers | March 13, 2024

The Container Corp. of America placed the symbol in the public domain in the hopes that it would be used widely to mark products made from recycled and recyclable paper products, making the symbol available in the fall of 1970 to all industries that recycle their products.

From Bauhaus to birdhouse

Sorting the Aspen legacy of Herbert Bayer

By Tim Cooney | March 10, 2024

While living in Aspen between 1946 and 1975, he was the carte blanche designer of modern town shaper Walter Paepcke during the transition from mining and ranching to skiing, but few realize how Bayer’s pivotal contributions to midcourse Aspen shaped what town is today.

Data dashboard: Local snowpack up after last week’s storm

Roaring Fork basin snowpack is about 2 inches above normal after last week’s winter storm.

By Laurine Lassalle | March 11, 2024

• Snowpack in the Roaring Fork basin reached an average of 15.1 inches of snow-water equivalent per site on March 10, or 109% of median. That’s up from 13.4 inches on March 3 and from 100% of median.
• Lake Powell was 33.7% full on March 10, down from 33.9% last week.
• Low air temperatures at ASE reached -7 on Feb. 28 before going back up to 23°F on March 2.

There are always stories that need a journalist to pursue them. These Aspen Journalism investigative stories are published for you, the community, and our collaborators as a public service, thanks to the generosity of our readers and funders. Will you join them?