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MCC Daily Tribune

Green Tip - The Straw Debate

Regardless of how the 'anti-straw' movement got started, more businesses and places are dumping the plastic straw. According to a National Geographic "Planet or Plastic?" series article, on January 1, 2019, Washington DC joined Seattle in banning plastic straws in restaurants and other service businesses. Starbucks, Alaska Airlines, and Royal Caribbean are among those that have ditched plastic straws.

Why pick on plastic straws?

  • They aren't recyclable, even though many are made of polypropylene. The problem is that since they are small and lightweight, in the recycling process they drop through sorting screens and mix with other materials so they either contaminate recycling or end up as garbage.

  • For many of us they are unnecessary. While some people need a straw, many of us use them since they came in our beverages.

  • Straws/stirrers are 5th on the list of pollutants and account for 7.5% of U.S. plastic pollution according to the B.A.N. LIST 2.0 (Better Alternatives Now) which used datasets from Ocean Conservancy's International Coastal Cleanup Day, NOAA's Marine Debris Tracker, Clean Ocean Action, Project Aware, and Heal the Day to compile their report.
  • Straws are a danger to wildlife since the plastic, once covered by algae, is often mistaken for food and eaten by seabirds, turtles, and fish. Once eaten, it can cause blockages in their digestive system.
  • Plastic is made to last longer than a human lifetime and doesn't break down easily in the environment. According to Roland Geyer, an industrial ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, nearly 60% of the 9 billion metric tons of plastic that has been produced since 1950 still exists on Earth today.

What can you do?

  • When ordering a drink, politely request 'no straw please.'

  • Buy your own reusable straw - made from glass, steel, metal, bamboo, silicone or paper for those times you really want a straw!

Ann Penwarden
Sustainability Steering Committee’s Recycling Committee
05/01/2019