The Plastic Straw And How It Is Killing Our Oceans
ARTICLE
Plastic Pollution · Ocean Protection · Daily Choices
Every straw has a story after we throw it away
Here’s a cold hard fact: every single plastic straw you have ever used in your life is still on this planet now.
A Cold Hard Fact
Every single plastic straw you have ever used is still on this planet
Plastic is not biodegradable. That straw you had in your cocktail, the ones you gave out at parties, weddings and events — that straw is 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
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, are made using toxic gases harmful to our environment.
Step 1
Toxic production
So there’s Step 1: the toxic production.
Step 2
Automatic overuse
Step 2 is where fast food chains, restaurants and cafés 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
Twenty minutes in your hand
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
The journey to the ocean
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. The wind carries them to water channels — lakes, rivers and other waterways — and they work their way along these bodies of water until they end up in the ocean. Then there are the instances where they are just cold-heartedly thrown into the ocean.
Step 5
The destruction
Step 5 is the destruction. Now they are in the ocean, they are there to stay.
Step 6
The invisible, everlasting, toxic plastic straw
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
Refuse the plastic straw
All of this, just so we don’t have to use the mouth we were born to drink from. Rethink 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 reusable plastic alternative, such as paper, glass and silicone.
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