Plastic Bag Ban in The Hub

Could plastic bags be banned in Beantown? Boston City Council is seriously considering it.

"They end up everywhere," said Councilor Robert Consalvo . "They blow in trees, they're floating in Boston Harbor . . . They're an environmental nightmare. We need to rid our city of these plastic bags."

..The proposal comes amid growing concern over plastic shopping bags, some 100 billion of which end up in American landfills each year, according to Worldwatch Institute, an environmental research agency.

The bags are popular among stores because they are cheap to manufacture, costing less than one cent per bag, and many consumers prefer them because they are easy to carry. But environmentalists have railed against them because they are difficult to recycle and take centuries to decompose in landfills."

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