Rough Draft Bar & Books using metal straws
KINGSTON, N.Y. » With the warm weather finally upon us, folks have begun trading in their winter clothes for summer apparel and steaming mugs of coffee and tea for their iced counterparts.
And in almost every instance, that iced drink comes served with a plastic straw.
But at Rough Draft Bar & Books in Uptown Kingston, the owners have traded in those single-use plastic straws for metal straws that can be used again and again.
Amanda Stromoski, who coowns the John Street shop with her husband Anthony, said the switch from plastic straws to the reusable stainless steel straws is
in keeping with their goal to be as environmentally friendly as possible.
“Anthony and I both try to make eco-conscious decisions whenever we can,” she said. “The environment is very important to us and we want to be sure we’re being environmentally conscious in our decisions.”
Most of the furnishings in the historic building that houses the Stromoskis’ business — the tabletops, the bar and even the bookshelves
— are made with reclaimed wood, she said.
Food items, when bagged at all, are bagged in paper, not plastic. The business offers 25 cents off of any togo beverage for customers who bring their own reusable to-go cup.
And customers are always asked whether they want a straw before being given one.
So it seemed only natural, when the warm weather finally started to settle in and more people were looking for cold beverages, to look for a more eco-friendly alternative to the plastic straws that accompany
those drinks.
“It’s just kind of a given that you get a straw with that kind of (iced) drink,” she said. “The coffee shop industry is one that comes with a lot of disposable product and using stainless steel straws in-house was one small step we knew we could take to cut back on a tiny fraction of that waste.”
According to the non-forprofit conservation group the National Wildlife Federation, every day, people in the United States use roughly 500 million plastic straws, enough to fill 127 school buses a day, or nearly 46,400 buses a year.
Those straws — which don’t biodegrade and find their way by the millions into water bodies across the globe — each year end up costing the of about 100,000 marine animals and more than a million sea birds that ingest the harmful plastic, according to the organization.
And the Plastic Pollution Coalition, a project of the non-for-profit Earth Island Institute advocacy group, predicts that the oceans will contain more plastic than fish by weight by 2050.
Rough Draft Bar and Books is one of a number of business across the country that are making the switch
to reusable straws while in some communities, plastic straws have been banned altogether.
Stromoski said the business began serving the stainless steel straws with beverages served in house last week.
Although at first there was a little confusion at first about what the metal cylinders sticking out of their glasses were, customers have really embraced the new straws, she said.
“It’s been overwhelming positive,” she said. “I’ve had people say they were going to go home and buy them for their homes.”
Stromoski said the stainless steel straws also elevate the drinking experience, giving it a more “sophisticated feel.”
“It feels really nice,” she said. “The cold travels through them and just kind of elevates the drinking experience.”
The business still gives plastic straws to customers who buy to-go beverages and to anyone else who asks for one, but Stromoski said she hopes that at some point they will be able to transition from the plastic straws to something more environmentally friendly for those beverages as well.