Is this the last straw for plastic tubes?
Area restaurants are being drawn into ecology fight
When Madison Payne ordered a margarita with her girlfriends at the Original Ninfa’s on Navigation, something was missing from the frozen cocktail: a straw.
The 24-year-old blogger with 214,000 Instagram followers wasn’t aware that Ninfa’s has been trying for a year to do away with plastic straws. She is now. Across Houston’s thirsty landscape, singleuse plastic straws have become a hot topic as a larger global discourse wages on the environmental impact of plastic.
“I’m totally fine with not having a straw,” said Payne. “I think it’s great that restaurants are becoming more environmentally aware of the issue. I don’t think it’s wrong to look for other alternatives.”
Which is what many in the city’s hospitality community have been doing
these days. Local bars and restaurants are weighing their options, eliminating the use of plastic straws and offering straws made of more eco-friendly materials.
Environmentalists have long railed against plastic pollution, and nationally straws have become the most visible culprit in plastic’s effect on marine life. Organizations such as the Plastic Pollution Coalition are supplying statistics that show staggering U.S. consumption: More than 500 million plastic straws are used each day. By some estimates there are nearly 8.3 billion straws on the world’s beaches.
“You only need to see so many straws in dead turtles and birds in autopsy images,” said Aaron Allen, a global restaurant consultant based in Orlando, Fla. “It’s going to be hard for people to put another straw in their mouth.”
Indeed, some of the biggest worldwide food and beverage chains have the issue on their radar. Starbucks this week announced plans to phase out plastic straws from its 28,000 stores worldwide by 2020. McDonald’s has said it will use biodegradable paper straws across its 1,300 locations in the United Kingdom by 2019.
Houston-based Landry’s, which owns and operates 500plus hospitality outlets in the U.S., said it is considering cutting out plastic straws.
Meanwhile, Seattle this month became the first major U.S. city to ban single-use plastic straws and utensils in bars and restaurants. More cities are expected to follow, though Houston officials haven’t outlined any moves in that direction.
It’s not just an urban issue. Sandra West Olmo of Katy posted a question about straw usage in restaurants on the Katy/Fort Bend Foodies Facebook page, which has more than 30,000 members.
Olmo wanted to know if her neighbors felt restaurants should provide straws only on request. Her thread elicited dozens of responses.
“I wanted to increase awareness of the way we so freely use them when we don’t need to,” she said.
When Olmo and her three children dine out, they can easily go through 10 straws when additional beverages are ordered. Now she encourages her children to ask the server at the outset not to put straws in their beverages.
“Everywhere you go out to eat, the drinks are served with straws,” she said. “For me, I’d like the choice of whether I use a straw or not.”
Brad Moore said his Houston bars, including Grand Prize, Lei Low and Big Star Bar, now provide straws only by request.
“We’re doing what we can, starting with straws, but it’s more expansive,” he said. “It’s about reduction of everything. As a human, you need to be aware and conscious and start changing behavior and patterns. It can become a bigger thing in our community if we’re all aware of just reducing in general. The straw is a tactic that could maybe get people to think about what they’re doing. If so, then we’ve achieved something.”
Benjy’s and Revival Market are offering straws by request only, too. Others, including Hugo’s and Xochi, are using paper straws. Treadsack, which owns Down House and Johnny’s Gold Brick in the Heights, also has made the switch to paper.
“This was something that was easy to rally around,” said Treadsack owner Chris Cusack. “It was an easy change to make, and people can see it immediately.”
The Houston Zoo has been working to eliminate single-use plastics since 2015, when it stopped using plastic bags in the gift shop. Last year, the zoo eliminated water bottles; in March, straws were nixed from concession stands. The initiative allows the zoo to prevent an estimated 80,000 plastic bags, 300,000 bottles and about 23,000 straws from entering landfills and the environment each year.
The zoo is currently working with five Houston bars — OKRA Charity Saloon, Big Star, Grand Prize, Sassafras and Catbirds — on a program to find more sustainable alternative for those customers who want to use a straw. The initiative, prompted by the harm plastic straws can do to sea turtles and other marine life, could expand to other bars in the city, said Mary Kate Kunzinger, the zoo’s conservation sustainability coordinator.
Concern about marine life was what prompted Lance Fegen, a partner and chef with F.E.E.D. TX , to introduce paper straws at his Liberty Kitchen restaurants. Customer reactions have been mixed, he said, but it’s still early in the game.
“I think the critical component is you have to tell the proper story and ‘the why,’” he said. “Then, people will say, ‘I don’t really need the extra wide straw to get more beverage in my mouth.’”
“It’s our fault,” added Fegen, an avid surfer, that he oceans are so polluted with plastic. “Someone could argue that you as an individual won’t make much difference. But we as a company can make a difference. And I can’t believe our customers won’t come back to us.”
While some Houston bars and restaurants are experimenting with hay, bamboo or metal straws, biodegradable paper straws seem to be the most convenient choice. If you can get them.
Fegen said his local supplier, Sysco, is having trouble getting enough paper straws to satisfy demand. Sysco has recently launched its own brand of paper straws and said in a statement it is now in a good position to fulfill orders.
Indiana-based Aardvark Straws, the nation’s only producer of FDA-compliant, foodgrade, marine-degradable paper straws, has seen a 5,000 percent growth in business in the past year. Kara Woodring, a sales representative for Aardvark, said the widespread usage of plastic straws in the 1960s nearly wiped out the company that today is manufacturing 24 hours a day with new workers and new equipment coming online to meet demand.
Paper straws are more expensive than plastic — about 2 cents each compared to a penny for plastic, Woodring said. But it’s an added cost some bars and restaurants are willing to absorb.
“We’re going to have to give a little to get a little with this one,” Fegen said.
Brian Fasthoff, who owns Batanga, agrees. The hay straws he uses at the downtown restaurant are three times more expensive than plastic. “At the end of the day, it’s not a huge, huge cost,” he said. “And it makes you feel a little bit better about beating the hell out of this planet.”
Sam Fox, CEO and founder of Fox Restaurant Concepts, which operates 50 restaurants throughout the country, recently announced his decision to eliminate plastic straws at all his restaurants in favor of an ecofriendly straw on request. Those restaurants include North Italia on Post Oak, the incoming Blanco Tacos + Tequila at the Galleria, and Flower Child in Uptown and The Woodlands.
“People are scared to make changes in business,” Fox said. “We’re not here to say our guests are smarter than any other guests. But we’re saying we’re listening to our guests and hopefully people who come into our store appreciate what we’re doing. It’s opening the door for all of us who run businesses to look at all our sustainability practices.”
The outright, large-scale ban of plastic straws may not be achievable in the short term. Price is an issue of course, but eliminating a product that works flawlessly and has been in the public’s DNA for decades won’t be easy. Especially in favor of notoriously flimsy paper straws, as Fegen discovered when he made the switch in his milkshakes at Liberty Kitchen.
“The first one we tried really fell apart,” he said. “Look, it’s not the best solution, but I think we’ll see other solutions that will be better.”
While chains like Starbucks and McDonald’s are trying to find solutions, “there’s really no viable alternative,” said restaurant consultant Allen. “I think that once it’s found, it will set off a bit of an arm’s race in terms of the pressure it will put on other companies, particularly quickserve companies that are going through a lot of straws.”
The plastics industry also is working to find solutions, including improving materials that not only work well but are less harmful to the environment, said Melissa Manning, who covers the industry for IHS Markit. It’s easy for people to demonize plastic, she said, but consumers have a responsibility to recycle.
“People in the U.S. don’t realize that we have a voluntary recycling chain,” Manning said. “It’s a huge amount of work to sort. If people want to recycle a plastic straw, they need to work to make it happen.”
Laurie Harvey, beverage director for State Fair Kitchen & Bar, Star Fish and Pi Pizza, said the issue is more complicated than simple elimination. None of those restaurants is using an alternative straw. “Do I think we can do away with straws? No, we cannot,” Harvey said.
“Will the customer give up straws? No. Can we look for ways that are better for the environment? Absolutely. I’m definitely open to the alternatives and excited to see what they are. I think people will get creative and come up with ideas. It’s better to start somewhere than to do nothing.”