City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is supporting an eco-friendly bill that would require Brooklyn and city stores to recycle plastic bags.

?Once we send them out in our garbage from our homes they stay in our landfills forever,? says Quinn.

Advocates of the bill say benefits will be seen by retailers as well as the environment. Once bags are collected, they can be sold back to manufacturers.

?Small retailers buy their bags and that?s one of their biggest expenses because they buy hundreds of bags?and they just give them away,? says David Vemillion of the Progressive Bag Alliance. ?This is a way for them to recoup money.?

Experts say plastic bags take about 1,000 years to decompose once they end up in landfills.

For more on Quinn?s recycling bill, go to channel 612 on your iO digital cable box and select iO Extra.