By Angelica Morrison
Every year, hundreds of volunteers work to clear plastic bags and other garbage from areas along the Great Lakes and its tributaries.
It鈥檚 an effort that takes place through the Alliance for the Great Lakes. The group leads clean-up events in cities like Buffalo, Rochester, Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago.
This year, the group's workers collected 431 plastic bags in the western New York region. Across the Great Lakes Basin, over 15,000 single-use plastic bags.
"So it鈥檚 definitely a part of the problem," said Nate Drag, who spearheads the group's program in Western New York. "There鈥檚 a lot of other plastic stuff out there. I wouldn鈥檛 say bags are the number one item but they鈥檙e there and they鈥檙e visible and they can entangle wildlife.
"When you go to the beach and you see visible debris like that, it discourages people from being stewards of the beach. It discourages people from coming back to the beach. It has a social and economic impact as well as ecological."
Drag says about 39,000 pounds of trash was collected across the Great Lakes states this year.
A community discussion about bags and other plastic pollution will take place at 6 p.m., Dec. 14, at the Tewksbury Lodge, 249 Ohio Street in Buffalo. Update: the discussion has been canceled due to the snowstorm.