Banning plastic straws is a start
Ubiquitous single-use tubes just a drop in the bucket of ocean-choking plastics
With cities around the world taking aim at drinking straws in a bid to reduce single-use plastics polluting our planet, food establishments big and small are also stepping up to take pre-emptive action.
Coffee conglomerate Starbucks announced this week it will phase out plastic straws by 2020, replacing them with a moulded lid. Burger chain A&W announced last month it will replace plastic straws in all its restaurants with biodegradable paper ones within the coming months.
Independent restaurants, too, are re-evaluating their practices. Kirkland sports bar Le Club Dome has similarly decided to go strawfree, after realizing it was going through as many as 500 plastic drinking straws a night.
These industry initiatives come as governments impose restrictions on ubiquitous disposable plastics — like the bans on straws in Vancouver or Montreal’s prohibition on single-use plastic bags. There is a great urgency to act with scientists and conservationists sounding the alarm about the incomprehensible amount of plastic garbage gyrating in the world’s oceans.
Cynics might see these moves as good PR for companies whose packaging, from cups to lids to containers, are a contributing factor to this grave global epidemic. But it is, nevertheless, refreshing to see business taking responsibility for seeking solutions (albeit ones tailor-made for their needs) rather than fighting regulations or being legislated into cleaning up their act.
Skeptics might also question how much of a difference eliminating plastic straws will make, given the amount of trash that fast-food packaging creates and the sheer volume of plastic debris churning in our oceans.
Indeed, disposable straws may be a just drop in the bucket.
An estimated 5.3-million to 14-million tons a year of plastic trash end up in our waterways worldwide.
But the impact of the straw, one item among thousands, is not negligible. When the city of Vancouver announced its plans, it noted that 57-million straws are used and discarded each week in Canada alone.
That’s a whole lot of waste from something that is totally needless and superfluous for the majority of the population. (Yes, straws may be a medical necessity for people with certain disabilities, but there are still reusable or non-plastic alternatives.)
Straws may be low-hanging fruit when it comes to devices that can be eliminated, reduced or replaced without undue hardship. However, these industry efforts are nevertheless an important step in our reckoning with the dire consequences of our convenience-oriented society and the global crisis it has created.
But banishing straws must not be the only measure undertaken. Rather, it should be a first step toward rethinking our environmentally harmful habits that are catching up to us, from our reliance on fossil fuels that are driving climate change to our over dependence on plastics that are killing aquatic life and choking our oceans.
Change needs to occur on a massive scale. But we have to start somewhere.
Governments — both national and municipal — must set standards and set the tone for change, whether it’s the United Kingdom outlawing not just straws, but plastic stir sticks and cotton swabs, or Montreal mulling new limitations on plastic water bottles in municipal facilities.
A motion on reducing plastics in the ocean surfaced at the tumultuous G7 Summit held in the Charlevoix region of Quebec in June. Again, a start.
Industry has an important part to play in this, starting with giving eco-conscious customers better choices. Online takeout service Foodora — which already delivers via bicycle in Montreal — recently announced customers can opt out of receiving disposable cutlery with their order in hopes of reducing plastic use by 30 per cent in 2018. It’s one gesture by one company, but again every bit makes a difference when it comes to turning the tide. And once one corporation launches a major initiative, their competitors often follow suit.
These business-led actions could also force some customers to reconsider their mindless consumption of plastics.
Once people realize they don’t actually need a straw at Starbucks or A&W, maybe they ’ll realize they don’t need one at other outlets, like McDonald’s. Or maybe they’ll rethink taking a disposable cup at all when they could carry a travel mug — and get a discount on their coffee.
The real power in this lies with consumers. The public must expect the restaurants, cafés and other enterprises they patronize to lessen their impact on the planet. Because business as usual is simply not sustainable.
According to a recent National Geographic exposé: Of the 9.2-billion tons of plastics manufactured since the 1950s, 6.9-billion tons became waste, and 6.3-billion tons was never recycled.
Let the magnitude of that predicament sink in for a moment.
Then the next time you eat out, think twice about whether you really need that plastic straw, fork or cup.