So I saw the other day that Starbucks was going to do away with straws by 2020, and even more important and overshadowed by the straw announcement was “..Starbucks has previously committed $10 million to develop and help bring to market, a fully recyclable and compostable hot cup, in partnership with Closed Loop Partners, through the NextGen Cup Consortium and Challenge. ” So not only will they get rid of plastic straws but the cups, another major source of waste may soon have a solution.
When this was posted on my facebook feed I saw some really dumb-ass comments – like why not now and just getting rid of straws doesn’t seem like much. well I don’t know the corporate strategy that requires them to phase it in over two, but the article says the new lid is available in over 8000 store. As far as why straws, well they have been one of the hardest of plastics to get out of the environment and it is a start of removing single use plastics. When I was younger I remember paper straws and then sometime in the 70s the plastic ones took over. What makes them more insidious then larger plastic items is that well meaning people will pick up a bottle or a cup, but not usually something as small as a straw. This BBC article says that ocean plastic could triple in the next decade. That is a shitload of plastic.
So I do believe that it is a start, but we need to do more. I believe that we need to look in the mirror and say what can we reduce from our own lifestyles? Bottles are good example, especially when there are so many cool stylish reusable ones. When we go out to our favorite movie theater we always pick the glass bottle or canned drink. I’m not trying to be holier then thou, but the more of us that choose to pick another alternative the closer we are to cleaning up the planet.
