Why I Hate Straws

http://barsupplies.com/fat-straws-bag-of-500-p-1554.html

I have always hated straws. Well...when I was young, I did enjoy the super long bendy straws at Ed Debevic's. But other than that, I've pretty much always been against them because I find them to be utterly wasteful, as they serve virtually no practical purpose and just end up in landfills.

Think about McDonald's for a moment. The McDonald's website says here that there are over 33,000 McDonald's restaurants worldwide. Now if each of these restaurants uses say...five straws an hour (which is a very conservative estimate), then 165,000 straws are used worldwide each hour in McDonald's restaurants alone. This yields 3,960,000 straws every day, which would amount to 1,445,400,000 straws in a single year!


I understand that some people are getting drinks for young kids to bring in the car, and some people may have recently had their wisdom teeth removed, and some people do not even have hands at all. If you are one of those people, by all means, use a straw. But, there are millions of fast food restaurants worldwide, and millions more restaurants and homes that regularly use straws for absolutely no reason.

Some people argue that glasses are not cleaned thoroughly, and a straw will help prevent getting germs. However, if the glass is dirty, the germs will be in the drink no matter what. Besides, nobody would ever use a straw to drink wine or alcohol. What makes those glasses any cleaner? This abc article even mentions a study that suggest computer keyboards can "ha[ve] levels of germs five times higher than [those] found on the toilet seat." So, if you are worried about getting diseased, you should not only use straws when from drinking from glasses in restaurants, but you should also probably wear gloves when typing on your computer, or touching money.



Not only are straws pointless, but they are incredibly harmful to our environment. According to this article, plastic makes up 20-25% of landfills, and takes thousands of years to decompose. Plastic is also oil based, and we all know that oil is a limited resource, and not something to be wasted.

http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_58030.shtml

Once straws are disposed of, they will most likely end up in the ocean or in a landfill. While straws will never completely biodegrade, they can eventually decompose. This process, however, can be even more detrimental to the environment, and directly harm humans. This article talks about how plastics break down, and informs the reader that the only real way for this to happen is through a process called "photodegradation". The article states that "when UV rays strike plastic, they break the bonds holding the long molecular chain together. Over time, this can turn a big piece of plastic into lots of little pieces." However, these extremely little pieces of plastic "are toxic chemicals such as bisphenol A (BPA) and PS oligomer." These chemicals are ingested by animals, some of which humans then eat. When water and animals are being poisoned, entire ecosystems can be disrupted, and this contaminated water can even end up on beaches, where humans are directly exposed to the toxins they have created.

So what can people to do help solve these problems? Start picking up their own drinks. If everyone stopped carelessly using straws, then huge amounts of plastic can be prevented from ending up in our oceans and in landfills.