Say "NO" to Single Use Plastic Shopping Bags in Central NY (and elsewhere!)

Please stop giving away free disposable one use plastic shopping bags to customers. Please offer reusable shopping bags at every checkout, and free cardboard cartons for carryout.

720,000 plastic bags are consumed in the US every minute.They are made using non-renewable fossil fuels resources, like oil, which needs to be extracted, processed and transported, adding to the release of carbon dioxide, a dangerous greenhouse gas, into earth’s atmosphere where it adds to increasingly severe climate conditions on earth.

Plastic bags take huge amounts of energy to manufacture, transport across the country, and even to recycle. We can save that energy, and not waste it on disposable shopping bags.

When not recycled, they blow around in the wind, often shredding into many little pieces. They up in gutters, waterways, and abdomens of wildlife killed by ingesting them. Plastic has so proliferated through our food chain and water supply that 93% of Americans have BPA, a plastic chemical, in their bloodstreams.

Reusable cloth or recycled paper shopping bags are much better for the planet and all creatures on it. Please offer reusable shopping bags at every checkout, and free cardboard cartons for carryout.