Stop Sucking.
The World’s Movement for a Ban on Plastic Straws
In the heat of summer months, there’s nothing like an ice cold drink. But, while drinking refreshing smoothies, milkshakes, juices, frappuccinos, and sodas this summer, many have something new on their mind: STOP SUCKING. The STOP SUCKING campaign addresses the extensive plastic pollution that results from the use of straws, an argued “completely unnecessary” item that is usually given to consumers at restaurants, cafes, and summer drink shacks without question and then thrown away. Straws usually aren’t recycled, and even if they do make their way to a recycling facility, their shape and plastic makeup usually sorts them as trash.
Americans use about 500 million plastic straws each day, which adds up to 182.5 billion straws each year. These straws and other plastic pollution flood our beaches, rivers, oceans, and landfills, and wreak environmental havoc on marine life. More and more, straw sucking realities are in the public eye by way of articles and such media captures as the over 30 million viewed gruesome clip of a sea turtle found with a straw up its nose. Plastic pollution is responsible for the death of over 100 million sea turtles every year, which are a mere small piece of the entirety of marine life affected.
The first striking statistics about straws were initially brought to the public eye in 2011 by nine-year old Milo Cress from Vermont. He couldn’t find any information for a school anti-waste project when he was in fourth grade, so he called up straw manufacturing companies to get some data. Cress took what he learned and started a “Be Straw Free,” campaign that called for local restaurants to offer straws optionally rather than automatically, and the campaign received local and then national attention.
Now companies such as Starbucks, Ikea, and Alaska Airlines, the city of Vancouver, and the entire nation of Scotland all have plastic straw bans in effect. In the U.K., Queen Elizabeth II banned plastic straws and bottles from all royal estates, cafes, and gift shops and British Prime Minister Theresa May instituted a nationwide ban on the sales of plastic straws, stirrers, and plastic cotton swabs. More leaders, companies, cities, countries, and individuals are taking action to change the straw norm, both through personal choice and through setting up public standards that make it easy to address the world’s plastic pollution problem. The kickstarter Final Straw is creating impact through innovation, creating the world’s first collapsible, reusable straw, offering alternatives for straw-sucking fans and institutions like hospitals.
500 million straws are used and thrown away everyday. That sucks, so we at Recover are certainly in to join the movement to stop sucking.
