Saving the Environment, One Straw at a Time

Only 9% of the plastic utilized everyday throughout the world is recycled, according to a study by National Geographic. A majority of the remaining trash that is not recycled ends up in oceans or landfills.

Various articles written in Business Insider and National Geographic in recent months have reported the significant amount of plastic that is finding its way into our oceans.

These articles have brought attention to this crisis and have resulted in efforts to eliminate plastic straws.

The consequential plastic straw ban was then initiated in Seattle and gradually moved to San Francisco in hopes of decreasing production of plastic that could potentially have a harmful effect on the environment.

Companies such as American Airlines, Starbucks, Hyatt and many more have vowed to stop giving their customers plastic straws.

On a worldwide scale, McDonalds and Marriott have also began eliminating straws and other unnecessary plastics from their inventories.  

Numerous companies, such as Starbucks, previously used approximately 170-175 million straws per day.

Starbucks barista and PVHS sophomore, Michael Mitsanas, shed light on his perspective as an employee.

“Every Starbucks in the United States will be phasing out plastic straws by 2019. The straws will be replaced with our new sippy cup lids which are made of 100% recycled materials,” Mitsanas said.

“At the moment, all Starbucks in Seattle are testing the new lids before they arrive in every store in the USA.”

Starbucks tweeted out that once the straws have been removed, more than 1 billion plastic straws will be eradicated from their stores each year.

The desired outcome of this movement is to begin the removal of unnecessary plastic usage one by one and to spread this movement throughout the world.

Junior Alexa Lampe, shares a similar opinion on the new ban.

“I think it’s very unnecessary to have a straw just to drink something,” said Lampe.

“Restaurants or coffee shops should sell reusable straws to be bought by customers if they really want a straw.”

The PVHS cafeteria has caught onto the trend and lately has started to stop the use of unnecessary plastics such as single-use ketchup packets.

They have since been replaced by large, ketchup-filled containers with pumps. The cafeteria eliminated straws a long time ago for the same environmental reasons.

Each year approximately 300 million tons of plastic are being produced.

Approximately half of that number is for single-use plastic items.  

Though plastic straws make up only a small percentage of this, environmentalists are determined to continue this movement, for it is the little things that can make a big difference.