The law on straws is here
Warning letters in hand, Zach Rybarczyk patrolled the food court at Union Station, looking for offenders.
Past Auntie Anne’s, past Johnny Rockets. At Lotus Express, a Chinese food joint, Rybarczyk peeled the wrapper from a red straw and bent the end — the telltale giveaway. Plastic.
Washington has become the latest city in a nationwide movement to ban plastic straws, and it’s up to Rybarczyk, an inspector for the D.C. Department of Energy and Environment, to enforce the new law.
The straw cop left the rattled cashier at Lotus Express with a warning that if the store was still using plastic straws by July, when a grace period expires, it could be fined up to $800 (U.S).
Nine years after the District instituted a nickel bag tax and three years after it banned plastic foam food containers, it has turned on plastic straws — the newest target of environmentalists trying to reduce millions of tons of plastic that ends up in trees, waterways and in the bellies of wildlife. The effort has been galvanized by a viral video of a sea turtle with a straw stuck in its nostril.
“It’s pretty absurd the amount of resources we put into creating plastic materials that we are using for five minutes to an hour and then never again,” said Julie Lawson, director of D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s Office of the Clean City. “Single-use plastics are taking the same cultural place as tobacco where it’s socially unacceptable.”
Straws and the District have a long history: the modern drinking straw was born in Washington in 1888, when inventor Marvin Chester Stone received the first patent for an “artificial straw” made from paper and produced them in his factory.
Over the next century, the straw evolved from straight to bendable, from paper to plastic. But the popularity of the plastic straw, and its inability to decompose, is proving to be its undoing. The plastics industry has been pushing for reduced use instead of a ban.
“We don’t think the ban is the right approach because it ends up substituting one material for another,” said Keith Christman, managing director of plastics markets for the American Chemistry Council. “What we need to do here is reduce waste and not take a straw when you don’t need one.”
The District is among at least 15 jurisdictions that have outlawed plastic straws.
The local effort has been pushed along by Dan Simons, co-owner of the Farmers Restaurant Group. Last spring, Simons formed Our Last Straw, a coalition of D.C.-area restaurants, bars, hotels, event venues and organizations to lobby for an end to singleuse plastic straws.
At Union Station, during the first week of Januaryd when the ban took effect, many dining spots on the main level had already switched to compostable straws. But in the basement food court, Rybarczyk drew blank stares from cashiers who had no idea about the ban.