Ban the Straws! Save the Turtles!
Next time you grab a straw to drink out of your soda, think about how much effort it would take you to just sip on your drink like you would at home. That little bit of work could be the reason you save the life of a poor turtle just swimming along in the ocean. Over the past few years, people have started to realize the damage caused to our oceans by plastic straws and other microplastics. There needs to be a way in which we can solve this crisis. Luckily there is some work being done in this department as legislature changes.
Plastic straws have humble beginnings. It started when ancient Sumerians would use plastic straws to drink their homemade brewed beers. A patent for the drinking straw came out in 1888 but funny enough it was for paper straws! Things changed when the plastic industry started booming. With the prevalence of the paper straw invention, people realized plastic ones would be much better, not thinking about future environmental issues. Small plastic utensils, in general are starting to become a big issue in terms of pollution, the oceans are getting filled with small single-use plastics which is proving to be a big harm to marine wildlife and overall ocean habitability. Although straws are not the leading type of plastic waste, which are food wrappers and plastic containers, they pose a huge threat and are a great way to spread awareness of this issue. Plastic straws and other utensils are too small to be considered as recyclable. They end up getting filtered out because they are so small, so they mostly end up as trash which then ends up in the ocean.
The impact of this issue is simply the amount of garbage that is outputted by using single-use plastics. An estimate says that in the U.S alone roughly 500 million straws are being used every single day, and another study states that there are roughly 8.3 billion plastic straws polluting the beaches of the world. This heavily affects marine life. Research shows that 70% of seabirds and 30% of sea turtles have ingested plastic. At the current rate at which we are dumping plastic into the ocean, the weight of the plastic will overtake the weight of all sea life by the year 2050. Everyone has seen the terrible video of the poor turtle who had a whole plastic straw stuck in his nostril. We don’t need to harm wildlife like this due to our negligence.
The main people who this problem impacts are restaurants and other foodservice corporations that heavily distribute straws to customers. One of my good friends who works at a restaurant says how “There are just trash bags full of these single-use plastics, and I’m not even sure they are recycled”. These companies need to reevaluate and think of better solutions to the plastic epidemic. The government also needs to get more involved in this issue as they are the legislature behind the enforcement of banning such single-use plastics. How does it impact them? They are the main reason behind the pollution from single-use plastics and if they stopped, it would help stop much of the waste output.
Luckily I’m not the only one who’s talking about this. As of July 1st, 2018 Seattle, WA was the first city to ban the use of plastic straws and stirrers for restaurants in the city. NYC Council is introducing legislation to combat the use of plastic straws. Starbucks, a huge supplier of plastic straws, is aiming to switch away from using plastic straws and create straw-less drinking solutions instead for their cold drinks. There are also ways in which we CAN use straws but stay environmentally conscious. People have been switching over to paper/cardboard straws and even pasta straws, which are all biodegradable, unlike plastic straws which will stay in the oceans indefinitely.
Plastic straws in the grand scheme of things are just the start of the plastic catastrophe. It is great in the fight against pollution and is a good way of raising awareness. Once plastic straws are out, it is only a matter of time before other plastic items are banned such as plastic bags and candy wrappers. We need to keep the Earth clean, as said by Lady Bird Johnson, “The environment is where we all meet, where we all have a mutual interest, it is the one thing all of us share”. It is simply not worth the use of plastic for straws when you can simply drink out of the cup like a normal person.