You Are What You Eat With: Why Saying Yes to Plastic Straws is a Big NO for the Planet
Stop sucking
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I’m sure if you’re reading this then you’ve seen the upsetting video of the distressed sea turtle with a plastic straw lodged in it’s nose. It was a heart-breaking video which garnered over 33 million views.
I live on the coast in Georgia near Savannah so I’m used to seeing sea gulls with plastic six-pack rings around their necks. Turtles are a common sight and I’ve seen them with deformed bodies because the turtle had a six-pack ring wrapped around its body when they were developing.
The video did have a positive ending though, the sea turtle could breath again uninterrupted and light was shed on man’s over use and over dependency on plastics, more specifically straws.
Because of the video, companies including Alaska Airlines, Disney, and Starbucks decided to phase out plastic straws. Seattle, Washington, and San Francisco, California, among other cities, have moved to ban or limit them.
Is this an over reaction? After all, straws are just a tiny fraction of the plastics in the ocean making up less than 0.03% of the more than 8 million tons of plastic waste.
In the Disney movie, Happy Feet. Lovelace is the self proclaimed Guru of the entire flock of penguins. He wears the Sacred Talisman, which was “bestowed on him by the Mystic Beings.” The Sacred Talisman in actuality, is a plastic six-pack ring that was caught around his neck while he was swimming.
The lowly straw is emblematic of unnecessary plastic items and how human activity harms the planet generally and more specifically the oceans. The message is getting through. In addition to Seattle and San Francisco, the European Union moved to prohibit straws as well.
I’ve listed a few bullet points to push my point through the rhetoric:
- Most straws are made from a petroleum-based plastic called polypropylene made from fossil fuels.
- Polypropylene isn’t BPA-free.
- 71% of seabirds and 30% of turtles have been found with plastics in their stomachs.
- Straws and stirrers ranked as the 8th most likely item of rubbish to be found in the ocean.
- Straws are often mistaken as food by animals .
The video of the sea turtle is a tool of the modern day environmentalist and is nothing new. In 1860, Henry David Thoreau’s version of conservation, forest ecology urged farmers to plant trees in a natural pattern. HDT is still one of the most influential ecological contributor to conservationist thought.
There’s John Ruskin and his gray clouds of the “plague-wind “in 1871, decades into the industrial era. German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt warned that humankind was despoiling the Earth through deforestation and industrial emissions.
Modern Day Environmentalists
In the eighties, the phrase “paper or plastic” hit the vernacular of American popular culture. Paper bags were the only [disposable] choice since the 1850s for carrying groceries home, or for packing school lunches, or hiding that bottle of alcohol in so you could drink casually in public.
Growing up, we always opted for paper bags. They were sturdy and they folded nice and neatly in the cupboard. It seems that plastic bags were unorderly and always were balled-up and stuffed in a dark corner or drawer in the kitchen or garage.
In the late seventies and early eighties, a hole in the earth’s ozone layer was discovered. This layer of the atmosphere, as we know protects the Earth from ultraviolet radiation, which can cause skin cancer and cataracts and suppress immune systems and harm plants. Just two years after the hole was discovered, the world jumped quickly to solve the problem.
The Problem?
Brown paper bags.
To make a paper bag, you need paper, which is made from trees. So, the environmentalists decided to go after the logging industry and their preferred way of doing business: Clear cutting.
Obviously we need to have our forests for a variety of reasons; trees , shrubs, and soil absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) and release oxygen (O2) back into the atmosphere. This natural biome will also stop the heat-trapping greenhouse gases that we produce from our regular activities such as driving, vacationing, and using hairspray. If we cut down too many trees we disrupt the oxygen cycle enough that our oxygen supplies are diminished.
But logging can transform a swath of forest from a carbon “sink” into a carbon source, not only destroying CO2-absorbing trees but emitting tons of new greenhouse gases in the process — logging produces a giant carbon footprint Big Foot would be jealous of. Clearcutting — the most CO2-spewing logging method of them all — is meanwhile devastating to wildlife, habitat and water quality.
Tropical tree cover by itself can provide over 20% of the climate mitigation that we need by 2025 to meet the goals that were set by the Paris Agreement in 2015.
The eighties spawned not only MTV, Pac Man, and Seinfeld but the phrase “paper or plastic” (as previously mentioned earlier.) Paper bags were slowly phased out in favour of plastic bags. Today the hole in the ozone has nearly disappeared and the environmentalists need a new to threat in order to keep themselves relevant, and so global warming (or climate-change if you like) was born.
The 21st century’s answer to the 20th century’s clear cutting and the logging industry is American consumerism, more specifically the lowly, old straw. Yes, the small, thin, hollow piece of plastic is what will destroy the earth and all of mankind if we don’t act now . . . immediately.
The Answer?
Paper straws.
The argument is that paper straws are a necessary corrective to the plastic ones Paper straws as a corrective leave much to be desired: Paper straws are a crummy solution, have you ever used one?
I remember when McDonalds introduced them to my local restaurant. They were awkward feeling, nothing like the ones I’m used to. They don’t hold up very well; I like to savour my Diet Coke when I eat, which can take up to an hour per visit!
As I near the bottom of my drink I start to notice bits of paper in my drink. It doesn’t take long for the straws, despite its girth to disintegrate. There is nothing more disgusting than taking a sip of my drink and getting a mouth full of soggy paper.
Should I invest in a plastic straw of my own?
The Origin of the Lowly Straw
The real culprit isn’t the American individual who was just embracing technology but was Marvin Stone who was awarded a patent for an “artificial straw” in 1888 — “can never be used but once.”
In Alexis C. Madrigal’s 2018 article for the Atlantic, “Disposable America: A history of modern capitalism from the perspective of the straw” he laments, “A straw is a simple thing. It’s a tube, a conveyance mechanism for liquid. The defining characteristic of the straw is the emptiness inside it. This is the stuff of tragedy, and America.”
The paper straw isn’t that different from its plastic counterpart. Plastic straws, as well as paper straws are single use, even the originator of the straw, Marvin Stone admitted to that. Both are sheathed in a paper wrapper and both aren’t being recycled (at least McDonalds isn’t recycling them.)
Last year, the 68th largest economy in the world, McDonalds axed the 1.8 million plastic straws it uses per year, even though they were recyclable, in all its UK branches as part of a green drive.
But the US fast food giant says the new paper straws aren’t yet easy to recycle and are being put into general waste.
A McDonald’s spokesman says the straws are recyclable, but their thickness makes it difficult for them to be processed; to be fair though, McDonalds never recycled their plastic straws. Keep in mind that since McDonalds isn’t recycling their straws, they go into landfills.
“As a result of customer feedback, we have strengthened our paper straws, so while the materials are recyclable, their current thickness makes it difficult for them to be processed by our waste solution providers, who also help us recycle our paper cups,” a McDonald’s spokesman said.
I can see in the future the paper straw becoming a nuisance. The push for plastic bags over its counter part paper caused plastic bags to replace paper bags as an environmental issue. The push for paper straws over plastic straws could very well have the same outcome.
Then what?
There have always been alternatives for both paper and plastic bags. Alternatives for straws aren’t as abundant. Maybe just an out right ban on straws.
