8 • The Southwest Portland Post
Dear EarthTalk: What’s the deal
with some restaurants going “straw-
less” — that is, no longer offering
straws to their customers? What’s
so bad about sipping your drink
through a straw anyway?
— Jeffrey Edwards, Seattle, Wash.
Americans use 500 million plastic
straws—or 1.6 per person on aver-
age—every day. Based on this, a
typical American will use more than
38,000 plastic straws over the course
of a lifetime. While drinking through
a single-use plastic straw seems in-
nocent enough, don’t fool yourself:
Many of these straws find their way
into our oceans, polluting underwa-
ter ecosystems and harming marine
wildlife.
Researchers warn that if we don’t
clean up our act, there will be more
plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050.
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Plastics don’t biodegrade, but in-
stead break into tiny pieces which
are scooped up by marine organisms
unable to digest them. Or they end up
in huge mid-ocean gyres too clogged
for ships to pass through.
Cutting way back on or eliminat-
ing single-use plastic straws won’t
completely solve our ocean waste
problem, but it will go a long way
toward cutting back on plastic in the
ocean as well as raising public aware-
ness of the issue in general.
Last September the city of Seattle
went strawless in solidarity with the
Lonely Whale Foundation’s Strawless
Ocean campaign (look for #StopSuck-
ing on Twitter), a global initiative to
remove 500 million plastic straws
from the U.S. waste stream in 2017.
Some 2.3 million plastic straws were
permanently removed from the city’s
restaurants, cafes, bars and other busi-
nesses—and in July an official ban
on plastic straws will go into effect
there. Lonely Whale hopes that other
cities will follow in Seattle’s forward-
thinking footsteps.
For those who still love using
straws, there are a growing number
of reusable alternatives to plastic now
available. Bambu Home’s handmade
reusable bamboo straws come with a
cleaning brush and can be used hun-
dreds of times.
Eco at Heart sells reusable steel
April 2018
straws that are durable,
easy to clean and por-
table, so you can bring
them into the car, work
or anywhere.
Steelys reusable steel
straws come in a wide
variety of sizes, includ-
ing versions with bent
tips. Aardvark’s pa-
per straws are flexible,
customizable and du-
rable—and biodegrade
on their own within 90
days.
Meanwhile, another
eco-friendly option is
glass, such as those
made by Humming-
bird Straws.
Perhaps even greener The average American uses more than 38,000 straws over
are Harvest Straws, a lifetime without thinking about the implications of
all this plastic going to waste and polluting our oceans.
which are grown, har-
(Photo by Horia Varlan, FlickrCC)
vested and cut by hand
in Southern California from heritage,
website.
non-genetically modified grain
Using disposable paper straws
grown without irrigation, using no
or opting out from using a straw at
chemicals in any part of the process.
a restaurant or drive-through are
And reusable water bottles with
much better options than the con-
built-in straws—such as steel and
ventional plastic straws that will end
silicone models from Klean Kanteen
up as pollution in our oceans or in
or glass and metal varieties from
marine animals’ bodies.
Simply Straws—are also a good al-
It may require a bit of extra work
ternative to plastic straws. You can
but using reusable straws or alterna-
shop for these and other alternatives
tives can make a big difference for
to plastic via the strawslessocean.org
wildlife and for ourselves.
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