NY City Council To Reduce Amount Of Plastic Bags In City Landfills

By StopGlobalWarming.org (StopGlobalWarming.org) - January 29, 2007

The New York City Council is moving to reduce the amount of plastic that ends up in landfills.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn plans to introduce a bill today that would require stores to recycle plastic bags.

She’ll deliver the details of the recycling plan officially this afternoon, but a report in the Daily News says the bill would require stores to provide bins for customers to drop off their used bags. and stores would have to label bags to specifically direct customers to recycle.

“We’re introducing legislation that we hope and really believe will address the huge problem of the number of plastic bags that New Yorkers are using everyday – and the fact that there is really no where to take them or nothing to do with them to get them to be recycled,” says Quinn.

A bill was introduced in the state Assembly to ban all plastic bags, but that measure has not gone anywhere. Earlier this year, San Francisco became the first large city to ban supermarkets and pharmacies from giving customers plastic bags.