Hoboken's middle schoolers are trying to make the city more environmentally friendly, one plastic bag at a time. 

In a meeting with Mayor Dawn Zimmer, Council members Peter Cunningham and Carol Marsh as well as some city hall staffers on Tuesday afternoon, a group of enthusiastic middle schoolers presented their plan of banning plastic bags in the Mile Square. With the help of a slideshow and a oral presentation, the students asked the mayor for her help. 

"Together we can make this happen," Zimmer told the group of students. "I want to make Hoboken as green as absolutely possible."

The students, all determined to make Hoboken a better place, have studied the effect of plastic bags for the past month at the All Saints Episcopal Day School. 

"We learned so much," said 10-year-old Morgan Fields, adding that non-recyclable plastic bags are "eating up our earth."

The students participated in the School Reuse Challenge, a partnership between reusable-bag startup MY ECO and studied how people use plastic bags, while urging them to switch to reusable ones. The students also went around town asking people to sign a petition to ban plastic bags.

"It was like a first job!" said Fields. 

The mayor said she wasn't sure what would be the best way to fight the problem of plastic bags, either through taxation or charging people for the bags. But, she added, "eventually we need to ban the bags."

Zimmer said she will definitely be proposing a resolution to go before city council in the near future, and invited all the students to attend. 

"Let's stay in touch," she said. "We are going to do this."