Buffalo has the opportunity to join progressive cities such as San Francisco, Boston, Baltimore, Oakland, Calif., Portland, Ore., Santa Monica, Calif., and Steamboat Springs, Colo. in banning plastic grocery store bags that are distributed with limited thought for the environment.

Every five seconds, Americans use 60,000 of these petroleum-based bags, which take 1,000 years to biodegrade, and since the national average of recycling these is 1\%, there is a ton of waste ending up in landfills and massive amounts of oil being used.

With a push from your office, we can convince local stores like Wegmans and Tops to do the right thing by banning the plastic alternative and encourage reusable bags, saving 1,000's of gallons of oil to manufacture plastic bags.