Don’t ask, don’t give: a policy for single-use plastics
I recently ordered a grilled cheese in an airport restaurant, but along with the sandwich came a napkin, wrapped and taped around a plastic fork and knife that I didn’t want or need. The sandwich was deliciously greasy, so I ended up using the napkin, but I felt bad about the accompanying utensils that are now headed for a landfill. (Sure, I could have kept them for later use, but that would merely delay their trip to the dump.)
It was a tiny moment of garbage guilt, out of many, but I remembered it when I read about the efforts of ten-year-old Milo Cress of Burlington, Vermont, who last year persuaded a local restaurant to hand out straws only upon request. Milo’s Be Straw Free campaign has since spread the practice to scores of other restaurants nationwide, including some chains. Establishments that quit giving straws as the default have found their straw use (and straw spending) cut by up to 90 percent. (Americans go through more than 500 million plastic straws a day, according to Simply Straws, which makes — you guessed it — narrow glass cylinders designed for sucking liquids from containers.)
Thanks to Milo’s efforts, the National Restaurant Association now recognizes “offer-first” as a best practice. Just goes to show: if you don’t ask, you don’t receive. And if you don’t offer single-use disposable plastics in the first place, some people might not even miss them.
*Bonus pedantry!
Q: What did we use for straws before the days of cheap plastic, paper, or glass?
A: Actual straw: a single stalk of grain.
Image: Duane Romanell
This post originally appeared at www.onearth.org/theroytestuff
Elizabeth Royte is the author of 
2 comments
I’ve been wondering lately what are all those current day straws made of. Parents so worried about this or that in their kids stuff. Do they ever ask what’s in a straw?
Frank, you are a curious man! Today’s straws are polypropylene, according to this: http://www.enotes.com/drinking-straw-reference/drinking-straw Polypro is one of the “safer” plastics, in terms of leaching. But as this site shows, making straws is energy intensive. Why do we even need them? Oh, to get the juice out of the tiny juice box.
Leave a Comment