Reusable straws are all the rage nowadays. They’re a top seller on Amazon. They’re plastered all over Instagram and Facebook, accompanied by celebrity endorsements and hashtags like #StrawsSuck and #StopSucking. Even major companies like Starbucks and Marriott are catching on and are working to phase out single-use straws in an effort to augment their corporate social responsibility. They’re trendy and trending -- and for a good reason.
The United States alone goes through over 500 million plastic straws every day according to EcoCycle, a nonprofit recycling organization. That's more than 1 straw per day per American. The straws are used only for a few minutes but can last for potentially hundreds of years in the ocean, threatening marine life and choking our reefs and beaches.
How? Plastics don't naturally degrade into easily reusable compounds but instead breaks down into smaller plastic pieces, often called microplastics. These microplastics can not only choke marine life, but also releases toxic chemicals, like BPA, when it breaks down. Through bioaccumulation and biomagnification, these chemicals can work their way up the food chain in continuously higher quantities and end up in a fish on your dinner plate.
But straws themselves are far from our biggest problem when it comes to this marine plastic pollution. In fact, if all the estimated 8.3 billion straws scattered on our coastlines suddenly washed into the ocean, it would only account for .03 percent of the 8 million metric tons of plastics estimated to enter the ocean annually.
The majority of microplastics found in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the world’s largest collection of floating trash, actually come from abandoned fishing gear - not from plastic bottles or straws drawing headlines today.
With straws, we’re solving a symptom of a larger plastic addiction. It’s a baby step, but it could be more. The straw bans aren’t going to save the ocean, but they could inspire us and others to jumpstart further environmentally-conscious lifestyle choices and trends. By drawing more attention to how you use a plastic straw, you are more likely to be aware of your consumption of other single-use plastics and your carbon footprint. The straw could be a “gateway plastic.”
So, in other words, let’s keep up the enthusiasm. Let’s use this anti-straw energy to encourage ourselves and others to use reusable bags at the grocery store, to bring reusable mugs to Starbucks, and to bring reusable containers for lunch. Let’s use this same consumer pressure to advocate for sustainable fishing companies by choosing who we buy from and who we give our money to.
Let's get serious about our oceans.
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