Plastic straws given the push

tion that, for some reason, we've come to love,” Andre´s says. “But it's beautiful to drink directly from a glass. It's the most elegant thing. Why would you want a piece of plastic?”

Demand for biodegradable straws is rising, say US restaurant suppliers.

“Straws are kind of an unnecessary item we've gotten accustomed to,” says Kara Woodring, a sales representative at Aardvark, a Colorado-based manufacturer of paper straws.

The company, which invented paper straws in 1888, sold them with much success for decades. But by the 1960s, low-cost plastic straws had begun flooding the market.

The company came back to life decades later, in 2007, when it updated its paper straws at the request of Ted's Montana Grill, a restaurant chain. Now Aardvark has thousands of clients. Sales of its biodegradable option have doubled in five years.

At Freehold Brooklyn, a New York coffee shop, bar and private event space, managers say they used to spend US$9000 a year buying 1.5 million straws. But over the past two years, they've swapped plastic for paper and have begun weaning customers off straws altogether. These days, waiters hand out just five or six straws a week, says marketing director Lydia Mazzolini.

“It's so easy to do without a straw once you try it,” she says.

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