Many people who have used a paper straw and taken their time to finish a beverage know that the situation can get a bit… soggy. However, use of the straws has increased in recent years due to concerns about single use plastic and the environment.
Former President Joe Biden took steps to phase out single-use plastics, according to Packaging Dive, but current President Donald Trump doesn’t want paper straws to replace plastic ones.
“I will be signing an Executive Order next week ending the ridiculous Biden push for Paper Straws. Which don’t work. BACK TO PLASTIC!” said the president in a Friday social media post.
In 2022, NBC News reported that growth in straws made in plastic alternatives such as paper and bamboo was “significant.” It identified a viral video from 2015 of researchers removing a plastic straw from a turtle’s nose as a catalyst for plastic straw backlash that began in 2018. That year, Starbucks said it was researching alternatives to plastic straws and late last year, it announced a plant-based straw program in Japan.
An Ipsos/Buzzfeed poll from 2018 found that under half (48%) of respondents said they supported local governments banning the use of plastic straws. It also found that (59%) would prefer to always receive a plastic drinking straw when they order a beverage at a fast food restaurant and that 50% would always like to receive one at a sit-down restaurant. By 2022, an Oceana poll found that 68% of registered voters would support policies that reduce the use of specific single use plastic straws.
However, research indicates that paper might not be the best alternative to plastic straws. A 2023 study found that “forever chemicals” were detected in almost all paper-based straws, for example.
Back in 2018, Jim Leape – co-director of the Center for Ocean Solutions and the William and Eva Price Senior Fellow in the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment – shared some more pitfalls of the plastic straw elimination movement.
“Plastic straws are only a tiny fraction of the problem – less than 1%,” he said.
“The risk is that banning straws may confer ‘moral license’ – allowing companies and their customers to feel they have done their part. The crucial challenge is to ensure that these bans are just a first step, offering a natural place to start with ‘low-hanging fruit’ so long as it’s part of a much more fundamental shift away from single-use plastics across the value chains of these companies and our economy.”
In the years since Leape weighed in on the issue, concerns about plastic pollution have continued to grow. Research published just this week indicates that the average person has about a spoonful of microplastics in their brain. Other efforts to ban plastics include a ban on plastic bags that was signed last year by California Gov. Gavin Newsom and a shift towards the use of reusable straws rather than single use paper straws.
A review covering 20 years of microplastics research published last year concluded that “the environmental burden of microplastics continues to grow, so a combination of scientific, economic, and social interventions will be necessary to curb that growth.”