Plastic straws fade, creating shortage of paper alternative
The lowly plastic straw has become the focus of high controversy. California state lawmakers are considering a law requiring restaurants to provide straws — like other plastic products, an environmental hazard — only on request. Cities including San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley are moving to outlaw plastic straws entirely. Meanwhile, companies such as Ikea and SeaWorld have announced plans to ban single-use straws and utensils from their properties. Even McDonald’s is considering going plastic straw-free.
But as drinking moves greener, bars and restaurants are finding one unexpected consequence: Paper straws, the most popular replacement to plastic, are in such high demand that there’s a shortage.
Aardvark, the Fort Wayne, Ind., manufacturer that is Bay Area bartenders’ preferred purveyor of paper straws, has seen a 5,000 percent increase in sales and demand in the past two years. Even with production running 24/7, that demand
has created serious delays in fulfilling orders.
“The lead time for Aardvark is up to seven weeks, if you prefer a certain color or design,” said Justin Lew, a co-owner of San Francisco’s Alamo Square bar Horsefeather and the soon-to-open bar Last Rites in Duboce Triangle.
“We are asking people to please plan way ahead and place orders now for the months to come,” said David Rhodes, Aardvark’s global business director, “and to beware of inferior copycat imports that don’t perform well at all.”
Aardvark is prioritizing orders from coastal regions like the Bay Area where plastic straws can wreak havoc on ocean habitats. (Anyone who’s seen the viral video of the sea turtle with the plastic straw in its nose knows why.)
To ride out the shortage, some Bay Area bars are exploring other alternatives, such as biodegradable plastic straws. But these in fact are not compostable, according to Sunset Scavenger, the waste management company that recycles, composts and picks up trash for many San Francisco bars.
H. Joseph Ehrmann, owner of Elixir Saloon in San Francisco’s Mission District, learned that the hard way when he switched to biodegradable straws a few years ago. Sunset Scavenger told him that it wasn’t possible for their process to distinguish between regular plastic and biodegradable. “So when they see a batch of compost with them in it,” Ehrmann said, “they have to discard the entire batch.”
Apart from paper, only straws marked by the manufacturer with a “100 percent compostable” mark or with a green stripe are allowed in the compost bin — an extremely rare feature. If there’s no mark, recyclers have to consider it trash.
But paper straws have their share of problems, availability aside. They usually cost a few more cents each than plastic. And many people simply dislike drinking from them: Some paper straws, especially lowerquality ones, turn soggy sitting in a drink.
Even higher-quality paper straws, which don’t get soggy as easily, require habit changes on the part of the drinker. William Prestwood, general manager at Pagan Idol in San Francisco, finds that people like to play with their straws, which can lead even the best paper versions to collapse or rip. “If people understand that the straw is not a fidget spinner or stress reliever, they’ll work as intended,” he says.
Stirring your drink, fishing out garnishes, chewing a straw or just poking mindlessly — these are hard habits to break.
Even Lew has his grievances. While he appreciates paper straws, which can have colorful patterns that play off the vibrant drinks he makes at Horsefeather, they can have negative effects on certain drinks.
“We have a cocktail on cobbled ice for Last Rites that’s in an oddly shaped glass that tapers at the bottom,” said Lew. “When you poke around with the straw, as one does, it flattens at one end between the ice and the side of the glass and clogs. Basically, you can’t use the straw to drink.”
Frustrated, his staff has suggested that they move back to plastic, but Lew has a hard time justifying it on a moral basis.
The dilemma has caused some bartenders to ask whether straws are needed at all.
“You need to break bartender habits as well as customer habits,” said Ehrmann, who is seeing a two- to three-week delay on paper straw orders. “In the current shortage I have put the emphasis on my staff to get used to not putting a straw in every drink.”
Jessica Maria, owner of the Hotsy Totsy Club in Albany, has gone further. Since moving to paper, she offers straws only by request.
“We posted a few signs around the bar with a cute sea turtle on it briefly explaining why there is something missing from their drink,” Maria said. People have been receptive. “The end goal would be to remove straws entirely, but I’m not sure the consumer is ready for that just yet.”
Metal straws could be a viable option. At Horsefeather, Lew and his staff use metal straws to taste drinks before serving them. But Ehrmann reports that his customers don’t always enjoy drinking out of them — and that theft of metal straws is an issue.
The ecological gains of ditching plastic straws are obvious, but there may be intangible losses, too. We play with plastic straws while we drink, wave them to gesture and, as Prestwood points out, use them as a stress reliever. One friend admitted that he would miss the squeaking sound of a plastic straw poking through a lid.
“There needs to be a gradual implementation plan that is executed over a reasonable amount of time,” said Aardvark’s Rhodes. “As much as we would all like to see plastic straws gone tomorrow, it will take time.”