Milkshake pipeline or turtle tormenter?
Being a favored conduit for root beer, milkshakes and Mai Tais means the drinking straw evokes mostly fond associations — to the extent that we give it any thought at all. Humble, hollow and transparent, straws are the ultimate throwaway. And that is precisely the problem, according to a growing movement to convince us that straws are, in more than the literal sense, sucky.
Berkeley, naturally, is at the vanguard of this latest lefty attack on a product widely regarded as innocuous but, according to its detractors, contributing pointlessly to landfill, beach litter and vast marine garbage flotillas. Its City Council is considering prohibiting restaurants and bars from providing plastic straws, which the proposal describes as a “poster child for needless single-use plastic” and, by the way, “in most cases not required to enjoy a beverage.”
Berkeley isn’t the only city to dare to get between you and your means of enjoying beverages. Davis may soon stop restaurants from sticking straws in sodas willy-nilly, though it would allow them to be provided upon request. A number of cities have plastic restrictions that affect some straws. And many businesses participate in voluntary bans. But an outright straw fatwa appears to be unprecedented.
So are plastic straws really the next plastic bags, doomed to deepening derision and criminalization? Granted, outrage doesn’t naturally attach to a bub- ble tea delivery device. But the final straw here didn’t break the camel’s back so much as the turtle’s nose: A 2015 video of scientists painfully extracting a straw from an unlucky sea turtle’s nostril went viral, recruiting countless horrified viewers to the straw wars.
“Straws,” a recently released documentary, captures the utensil’s duality. It begins with a cheery, Tim Robbins-narrated animated history of straws, from a golden ancient Sumerian model, through the soggy turn-of-the-century paper variety, to such dazzling leaps forward in 20th century drinking technology as the “bendy” and “silly” straws. But fast food-driven proliferation made straws a modern scourge. An activist recalls the “river of trash” off the coast of Belize that made her next plastic straw her last.
Americans use about half a billion disposable straws a day, according to an estimate by recycler EcoCycle. Sure, they’re just a sip in the Big Gulp of garbage generated in the age of bottled water and free shipping, but they’re a remarkably needless one — and there are reusable alternatives for those who can’t or won’t do without them. Ripe for ridicule as it may be, Berkeley’s proposal does encourage a reexamination of the largely unexamined straw, one that leaves it looking sillier than before.