Do Plastic Straws Really Suck?
Tackling the great straw debate
Last month I traveled to Jamaica on a vacation. As I lounged in the 85-degree sun and prepared to take a sip of my frozen pina colada by the lavish resort pool, I noticed the bartender had forgotten my straw. I climbed out of my lounge chair to ask the man behind the bar for a straw and he looked at me with pure horror. The bartender keenly exclaimed, “We don’t serve straws here!”
What I didn’t know at the time was Jamaica is making major strides to save its environment by banning single-use plastic bags, Styrofoam, and plastic straws. I’ll be honest; I was completely embarrassed to appear as a cliché American who didn’t bother to learn the local customs of the country I was traveling to. I learned that prior to the ban, “Jamaica was known to have one of the highest uses of plastic bags, with each person using 500 bags per year,” according to Forbes. I began to think more about Jamaica’s strides towards a “greener” society and compare it to the recent rumblings of plastic straw free movements in the U.S.
Companies such as Hyatt Hotels, American Airlines, and Starbucks, have already taken the pledge to reduce or eliminate the distribution of plastic straws altogether. Hyatt is only making plastic straws available upon request and American Airlines and Starbucks will offer plastic straw alternatives such as paper straws, or recyclable plastic lids. A social media campaign called #StopSucking for a strawless ocean is circulating and catching the attention of several celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Amanda Seyfried, and Ellen Pompeo.
I was slightly skeptical at first. I wondered what the difference was between a company like Starbucks that bans plastic straws but still uses plastic cups? I found that Starbucks plastic sippy lids are fully recyclable. Here’s the problem with plastic straws.
Plastic straws are small, so they end up being harder to decompose and many recycling centers don’t even accept them. According to the Strawless Ocean Campaign, “Most plastic straws are too lightweight to make it through the mechanical recycling sorter. They drop through sorting screens and mix with other materials and are too small to separate, contaminating recycling loads or getting disposed of as garbage.”
Over 500 million plastic straws are used in the U.S. every day. That’s 500 million chances of falling through the recycling cracks. Many times, plastic straws end up in the ocean polluting our water and disrupting out marine life. It’s projected that by 2050 there could be more plastic in the ocean than fish.
Recent discussions of climate change have been an extremely hot topic. Leading causes like the burning of fossil fuels that causes a greenhouse effect warms the earth’s surface leading to heat waves, an increase of natural disasters like wildfires and drought, and sea level rise which is causing the melting of glaciers and ice sheets.
You may be wondering what all these facts about climate change have to do with plastic straw pollution? When it comes to the relation of ocean pollution and climate change, the relationship status would be “It’s Complicated.”
If the earth’s weather had a leader it would be the ocean. According to the Ocean Conservancy, “The ocean has absorbed over 90% of the heat from climate change and is the sink for roughly 30% of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions. That means that without the ocean as a buffer, heating from climate change would already be intolerable for much of life on earth.” The Ocean plays a central role in climate change, so without a healthy ocean, the earth will not be able to thrive in the way it’s intended to.
My skin is now crawling with horrible images. I found myself watching that viral video of an injured sea turtle with a straw trapped in his nostril (don’t watch if you’re squeamish) and continued to get angrier because if we can realistically make changes to fix this, why aren’t we?
Well for starters, there’s that pesky little thing that hides in the background called money. “Paper straws cost about 2½ cents, compared with a half-cent for plastic straws,” CEO of PacknWood, Adam Merran, told CNBC. In order for companies to phase out plastic straws, they must choose a more expensive alternative to produce and most would likely choose the cost-effective option.
A plastic strawless future for all companies may be a long time away if they don’t place the value of climate change and pollution over their company costs. Maybe every company is not ready yet, but at the very least, I propose that dine in restaurants can and should go strawless with reusable straws for diners who absolutely need them similar to providing a reusable fork and knife.
Rome wasn’t built in a day. Realistically our society won’t go from using 500 million straws per day to zero anytime soon, however, if changes can start being made to help work towards the elimination of plastic straws, WHY NOT be the change?
There are many options in place of using plastic straws. Try using a tumbler cup with its own reusable straw. If you don’t have room to carry around your cup, you can purchase a reusable straw that comes inside of a super functional keychain. If you are feeling really bold, just opt to go strawless completely! Take the pledge to #StopSucking because plastic straws really do suck.
