By Tenley Tuschman
Within the past year, plastic straws have become an extremely controversial topic among people around the country. Big cities, large corporations, and even states have started banning the use of plastic straws in their businesses. The question though, is why? The seemingly harmless utensil has become a symbol for the worldwide plastic pollution problem.
The anti-straw movement first came to life after a video of a turtle with a plastic straw stuck in his nose went viral in 2015. In that same year, plastic consumption worldwide totaled at 300 million metric tons. People began reposting the video and spreading awareness for it all over social media. This started a worldwide conversation about how harmful plastic straws, and plastic in general, are to the environment.
Although plastic straws are not the leading type of plastic waste, it is their size that makes them such a big target. So many people forget about them because of how small they are and therefore underestimate the damage they can do. Because of this, people forget to recycle them. In the US, an estimated 500 million straws are used per day. This means that the US uses about 182.5 billion straws on average in one year. And that is just one type of plastic people use in their everyday lives. All of that plastic adds up, and within the past year 91% of the plastic used is not recycled and instead ends up in landfills and the ocean. This is why our marine life is in so much danger and why people are trying to take action and change their use of plastic.
This is where the idea of removing plastic straws came in. There are so many alternative uses of plastic straws that big companies have started adapting. Starbucks announced that by 2020, they will officially be moving away from all plastic straws. The corporation has already started pushing forward with the project; many of their cold drinks now use their new strawless drink lid design. Other corporations such as Aramark and American Airlines are vowing to stop offering plastic straws. In July of this year, Seattle became the first major US city to ban the use of plastic straws for vendors in the city as well as plastic utensils. They have instead adopted the use of compostable paper straws. The UK and the European Union have also started taking action for the removal of plastic straw. McDonald’s in the UK has begun its process of removing all plastic straws from its stores and they have even set a goal to have 100 percent of packaging materials for food and beverages be from renewable and recycled sources by 2025.
The removal of plastic straws is a tremendous step forward in paving the way towards a better environment, but there is still so much more we can do. Plastic pollution is a major global issue and it is going to take a lot more than removing plastic straws to help save our oceans.
Southview Catalyst 