Here’s a cold hard fact…
Every single plastic straw you have ever used in your life is still on this planet now!
Plastic is not biodegradable. That straw you had in your cocktail, the ones you gave out at parties, weddings, events – that straw – it’s still here somewhere. Most likely in the ocean. No doubt you’ve seen this on social media. Plastic shaming has become somewhat of a craze lately. Good. I’m glad, but how much do you really know about where your straw ends up?
The Never-ending Life Of a Plastic Straw
Every day we use – and almost immediately discard – over half a billion plastic beverage straws. So how many does that mean are actually being made? I think we are too scared to release that stat, but let’s just say a lot more than 500 million a day.
Plastic straws and plastic, in general, is made using toxic gases harmful to our environment.
So there’s Step 1; the toxic production
Step 2 is where fast food chains/restaurants/cafes etc get it wrong – offering the customer a plastic straw with EVERY drink. Apart from beer and wine. Ever thought about why it is socially acceptable to not drink beer and wine with a straw but every other drink just MUST come with one? What’s that all about?
Step 3 is your single use. The average ‘lifeline’ of a plastic straw in your hands is 20 minutes. It then gets discarded and not recycled and that’s the last you (think) you see of it.
Step 4 is the journey. Straws are light and small, they get blown out of bins, thrown on the floor and make their way to the ocean. How exactly? The wind carries them to water channels – lakes, rivers, etc – and they work their way along these bodies of water until they end up in the ocean. Then there are the instances that they are just cold-heartedly thrown into the ocean.
Step 5 is the destruction. Now they are in the ocean they are there to stay.
Step 6, the straw lives happily ever after, floating in the ocean, inside a fish’s stomach, wrapped around a turtle’s nose. The invisible, everlasting, toxic plastic straw.
Rethink Your Choices
All of this, just so we don’t have to use the mouth we were born to drink from. Re-think your choices. Refuse the plastic straw. If you do have to use a straw, we recommend one of Biome’s steel life-long straws , or any re-usable plastic alternative, such as paper, glass and silicone.
