The City Council is moving to reduce the amount of plastic that ends up in landfills.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. introduced a bill Monday that would require larger stores to collect plastic bags for recycling.

Under the bill, any store over 5,000 square feet would have bins for plastic bags. Stores that don't comply could face fines.

Bags would have to be printed with a notice encouraging customers to recycle, and stores would have to sell cloth or other reusable bags.

"It's really going to make a huge difference. One, in reducing what goes out in to our waste stream; but two, training New Yorkers that what you get can't just be thrown into the garbage without some form of impact on our environment," said Quinn.

"Back in the day of the Fresh Kills landfill, we referred to them as landfill birds because all the trees around the landfill had been filled with these plastic bags and that's true throughout our city," said Councilman Michael McMahon.

A bill was introduced in the state Assembly to ban all plastic bags, but that measure has not gone anywhere.

Earlier this year, San Francisco became the first large city to ban supermarkets and pharmacies from giving customers plastic bags.

SNAP POLL What type of bag would you choose?