Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Pasta, paper or plastic?
The first round of iced teas arrives for Tom Becht and his table at Bona Italian Restaurant in Wilton Manors, and so do the pasta straws.
Restaurant co-owner Glen Weinzimer plucks four long, slender tubes of uncooked ziti from a dispenser with a pair of bamboo tongs, and plops them in the beverages.
Becht sips his pasta straw. “Tea still tastes great,” the Fort Lauderdale man says, as his wife, Mary, nods in agreement. “Pasta straws. Only at an Italian restaurant, huh?”
In late June, mindful of the
hazards plastics pose to the environment, the 39-year-old restaurant on Wilton Drive swapped its straws made of plastic for straws made of carbs.
Aiming to reduce waste and ocean pollution, Bona Italian is part of a recent wave of South Florida eateries ditching plastic. In Deerfield Beach, some restaurants east of Federal Highway have committed to a “Strawless Summer” by using paper straws.
“When I started researching straws, and how many go into our environment, and how wildlife is choking on them, we had to stop using plastic,” Weinzimer says. “[Pasta straws] have no flavor, no aftertaste, and at the end of the meal, they’re biodegradable and go into the trash.”
Weinzimer and his business partner, Mark Byrd, encountered their first plastic-straw snafu not long after taking ownership of Bona Italian Restaurant 18 months ago. When a dishwasher broke down last year, a plumber unclogged it by pulling fistfuls of straws jammed inside the drain, Weinzimer says. His restaurant also has outlawed plastic to-go bags.
How are customers embracing pasta straws? Weinzimer’s Facebook post announcing the switch on June 26 has courted nearly 200 likes and shares. Reactions have ranged from “The sea turtles told me to thank you” to “Revolutionary.”
“I mean, we’re the gayest neighborhood in South Florida,” Weinzimer quips. “All I have to do is promote 10 inches of long, hard straws, and the people will come calling.”
Down the street on Wilton Drive, Hunter’s Nightclub has begun curbing plastic-straw usage at its bar, co-owner Mark Hunter says. He says the club will switch to either biodegradable paper or metal straws by the end of July. The idea, he says, is to snap customers out of the expectation that cocktails should automatically come with single-use plastic straws.
“It’s a whole new age,” Hunter says. “Our bartenders are telling customers to use the same straws throughout their visit. We even have customers bringing their own straws. One guy comes in with a straw with Swarovski crystals on it.”
Plastic has been a scourge on the world long enough that, by 2050, the World Economic Forum predicts the plastic in the oceans will outweigh the fish, according to a 2016 report. Straws in particular have wound up inside the garbage islands floating in the Pacific Ocean, and up the noses of sea turtles. Some 500 million straws are used and tossed away daily in the United States alone — about 1.6 straws per person — according to the National Park Service.
In response, Seattle on July 1 became the first major U.S. city to ban single-use plastic straws citywide.
That’s good news to Ashley Del Cueto, manager of Fresh First on 17th Street in Fort Lauderdale. The gluten-free breakfast and lunch spot has already nixed recyclable to-go cups and containers, and on June 9 began offering stainless-steel straws instead of plastic.
Why stainless steel? Del Cueto researched paper straws (“too flimsy and soggy,” Del Cueto says) and corn-based plastics (“could be harmful to people with corn allergies”) before settling on metal.
Del Cueto bought 1,000 custom-made metal straws from an Etsy shop, which she sells for 75 cents apiece at Fresh First, as a charge added to the bill. Signs posted in the bathroom and front register have announced the switch since last month.
She refuses to give customers plastic straws, and hopes regulars return with their reusable metal straws. So far, only a few customers have complained.
“I’ve only had four customers get so upset they’ve walked out of the restaurant,” Del Cueto says. “Our repeat customers are vegan, animal-friendly or environmentally conscious anyway, so they’re on board.”
Soon, Del Cueto plans to sell accessories to clean the reusable metal straws, including a pipe cleaner and a carrying pouch, she says. The cost: $1.
“We have to train people to stop expecting plastic straws because they’re poisonous to the environment,” Del Cueto says.