Ban the bag in NYC!

On Monday June 24 at 7 PM, please join City Council Member Brad Lander, the Green Party of Brooklyn, Sierra Club, NRDC, No Impact Project, Citizens Committee for New York City, Sane Energy, NYC Friends of Clearwater, PlasticBagLaws.org and BagItNYC for an informative evening to learn about the massive environmental impact that single-use plastic bags have in NYC, and the NYC campaign to do something about it.

This free event will take place at Greenwood Baptist Church, at 461 6th Street at the corner of 7th Avenue in Park Slope.

Speakers will include Council Member Brad Lander, who will be introducing legislation on plastic bags; Jennie Romer, who spear headed successful efforts in California to ban / restrict single use plastic bags and will discuss the various possible approaches (ban, fee, tax, etc); and Colin Beavan (No Impact Man).

We will also air several short videos on plastic bags, including “The Immortal Plastic Bag,” a mini-documentary about plastic bags in NYC.

The event will be an excellent opportunity to learn more about this issue and find out how you can get involved with the plastic bag campaign in NYC.

Nationwide, only a small percentage of plastic bags are recycled. Instead, they end up sitting in landfills, littering streets, clogging streams, fouling beaches and trees, or floating in rivers and oceans. Over 267 different species, from seabirds to turtles, seals, sea lions, whales, and fish, have suffered from entanglement or ingestion of marine debris, including plastic bags. Plastic does not dissolve; it breaks into tiny pieces and stays there for up to 1,000 years.

Single use plastic bags have been banned or restricted in cities across the US, including California (75 local jurisdictions including LA County and San Francisco), Washington, DC and Austin, TX. In LA County, a ban on single-use plastic carryout bags and a 10-cent charge on paper bags lead to a 95% reduction in single-use plastic bags in the first year.

In a recent NY Times article, the city’s recycling director pointed out that “Plastic shopping bags are an enormous problem for New York City,” noting that the city pays $10 million annually to landfill 100,000 tons of plastic bags. When plastic bags are carelessly placed into recycling bins for general plastic — which they often are — the bags jam and damage expensive sorting machines, which cost huge amounts to repair.

For more information, please contact [email protected]