Plastic straws: Where can I find environmentally-friendlier alternatives?
The politics and logistics of creating alternatives for stuff our society doesn’t want, but can’t easily give up.
Odds are, you’ve been using plastic straws for as long as you can remember.
So when you hear that those little cylindrical deals with the devil (momentary convenience for eternal waste) are rapidly becoming taboo, you’re probably wondering, “how can a straw addict like me survive in this brave new world?”
That’s especially true if you or a loved one is one of the millions of disabled people for whom the flexibility and omnipresence of plastic straws have been a godsend.
The good news is that there’s a wide variety of alternatives already on the market. They come in varying degrees of user- and environmental-friendliness and price. But you can buy them now with a few clicks of your cursor.
The not-so-good news is that not enough of them are being produced right now to satisfy the demands of mega-distributors like McDonald’s. As Mickey D’s CEO, Steve Easterbrook, recently explained, he’s balking at joining Starbucks and many other companies in phasing out plastic straws, because “There isn’t currently a viable alternative that’s nonplastic at the moment, at the scale we need.”
And therein lies two tales.
Tale number one is about what you can do when companies or governments won’t eliminate the temptation that comes with being handed a straw.
The ideal choice is, shall we say, abstinence. Yes, drinking directly from a cup. Our not-so-distant ancestors did so and managed to survive.
However, that’s not always preferable, as I was reminded recently by the cold fuzzy white residue dripping from my nose while trying to drink a not-so-smoothly-blended vanilla shake.
And for relatives and friends with epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, and other motor-skills-damaging conditions, even sippy cups don’t do the job.
The best compendium of alternatives I’ve seen so far was recently pulled together by Karin Willison, the Disability Editor of The Mighty website. Karen has cerebral palsy, which makes it hard to lift and hold containers. She really needs straws. But she notes that “We don’t need to choose between caring about the environment and meeting our needs as people with disabilities.”
In her article, titled “Disposable Plastic Straws Suck. Try These Disability-Friendly Alternatives,” Karin lists and grades six readily available alternatives to single-use plastic straws:
- Reusable plastic straws (the type that usually come with reusable plastic cups with lids; my daughter particularly treasures the one she got as part of her season’s pass at the local amusement park)
- Silicone bendy straws
- Metal straws (especially stainless steel)
- Paper straws
- Pasta straws
- Bio-based plastic straws (They’re called “bio-degradable”, but they decompose only if exposed to the type of high heat that can be generated by an industrial furnace.)
She could have added straws made out of bamboo, which I’ve seen in markets. But the thought of splinters in my lips makes me nervous about giving them a shot.
It wouldn’t be fair to give away Karin’s grades and recommendations. I encourage you to read the article for all of the information. Let me just say that I’m looking now for silicone tips to put on the steel straws we already have.
Karin’s guide is also an unwitting introduction to our other story.
Tale number two is about how to facilitate a big change in what can be called supply-side economics.
Specifically, how do you best make it possible for the millions of restaurants, grocery stores, delis, coffee shops, food trucks and cafeterias to quickly switch to alternative straws, with as little hassle and cost as possible for both customers and providers?
The single biggest problem is illustrated by the list of alternative straw suppliers listed in Karin’s article.
I don’t know the straw production business at all, but I highly suspect companies named Seraphina’s Kitchen, Mooker’s, and GlugGlug — which may well make killer straws — are not capable right now of meeting the sucking demands of McDonald’s 60 million customers per day. And McDonald’s probably accounts for only a percentage point or two of all straw distribution.
So it’s no wonder that, even if McD’s wants to do the right thing, they’re antsy about making promises they can’t keep or which don’t work. You may have forgotten about, or never heard of such fiascos as the McDLT, McHotDog, and Hula Burger, but they’d rather not relive those experiences.
What to do?
Well, if you’ve got several billion dollars kicking around, have I got an investment opportunity for you!
Absent that, there are two tried-and-often-true solutions.
The first is to persuade enough big potential customers — like McDonald’s — to take the leap. By creating a sufficiently large demand, they’ll enable the already-existing Mooker’s and Seraphina’s Kitchens of the world to get the capital and staff needed to expand enormously and quickly. And as those suppliers prosper, other companies — including plastic straw manufacturers who see the writing on the wall for their current line of business — will jump into the fray.
However, that often doesn’t work, especially as quickly as we’d like. Big companies prefer letting smaller companies be guinea pigs. If, after a few years, the experiments work, they’ll try to buy the innovators. If they don’t work, well, that’s the hazards of the free market system, they’ll say.
That’s where government action can play a key role. Through our representatives, we can create the demand ourselves. An incomplete list of ways to do so includes:
- Put up taxpayer dollars to pay for cutting-edge technologies. Think of all of the products you use everyday that were invented by scientists funded by NASA, the National Institutes for Health, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, state universities, etc.
- Require companies to purchase such technologies. Think of the renewable energy requirements passed by many states during the past 15 years. Many energy experts consider them the main cause for the enormous drop in solar and wind power costs and the increase in renewable energy use in the US.
- Phase out or ban products and systems, which has the effect of requiring producers and consumers to use alternatives. Think of the bans or heavy restrictions on DDT, thalidomide, incandescent light bulbs, crappy health insurance policies, and child labor, and remember how quickly better alternatives were developed.
When it comes to plastic straws, the United Kingdom, under the leadership of its Conservative Party, is going with all three, but especially Option Three. It’s planning on phasing out one-time-use plastic straws (and plastic ear swabs, too), starting next year. Other Commonwealth countries are considering similar actions.
Here in the U.S., nationwide action doesn’t seem likely in the near future. But many cities and states are thinking about following the lead of Seattle, whose ban on single-use plastic straws and utensils in restaurants went into effect on July 2nd.
Of course, those corporate and government actions don’t happen by themselves.
So the next time you’re online, look to Amazon and other e-tailers for deals on alternative straws AND sign this online petition to McDonald’s.
The next time you get a Big Mac Attack, tell the checkout staffer to hold the straws. The data-obsessed company undoubtedly will record your request and tabulate the number of similar asks around the country.
And give a buzz to your local city councillor, asking her or him to sponsor a phase-out. Here’s a link to Seattle’s new ordinance, which can be adapted to your local situation.
This won’t be the most important thing you’ll do in your lifetime to protect the environment. But you never know what change in public and private behavior will set off a cascade of far bigger changes, a tumbling of dominoes that results in a new paradigm.
Who really knows what straw will break the proverbial camel’s back?
