Page 60 - Thirst Magazine Issue No. 3 Coffee & Tea

THIS SUCKS

– THE CASE

AGAINST

STRAWS

traws are everywhere. With all the Costa Rica which had a 12cm
You can find them at plastic straw excruciatingly
the mamak, restaurants, alternatives in pulled out from its nostril by
coffee shops, bars… the world, we have marine researchers from Texas
Sanywhere you can A&M University. It went viral –
order a drink, you’ll likely find no reason to keep at the time of writing, it’s been
one dropped inside ready to make using plastic. viewed over 12 million times –
your experience that little bit and it helped to galvanise the
easier and more enjoyable. Story by movement against wasteful,
It’s a simple plastic tool with single-use plastic products.
a seriously short life cycle – Flavia Galeotti Specifically, straws.
basically the amount of time it
takes to finish a drink – before Illustration by HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
it gets disposed of and ends up Penny Chee The straw as we know it today
in a landfill to live out the rest of owes its existence to Marvin
its life. It’s said that plastic takes Stone, an inventor who loved
about 1000 years to fully decompose, which drinking mint juleps in his home of Washington
means that every single piece of plastic ever DC but hated the way the contemporary rye
made still exists somewhere in the world. grass straws altered the flavour and disintegrated
About 8,300 million metric tonnes of plastic into the drink. He created the first paper straws
has been made since 1950, of which 6,400 million with paraffin-wax coated Manila paper in the
metric tonnes are in landfill or littered in the late 19th century, and it later became immensely
natural environment; 12% has been incinerated popular with the advent of the soda fountain in
and only 9% has been recycled. This has led to the early 20th century. By the 1960s, the plastic
such things like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch version took over in the form that we continue
being formed out in the North Pacific Ocean, to use across the F&B industry to this day.
numerous marine creatures large and small The single-use nature of the straw has
found with plastic in their stomachs, and seabirds noble intentions, as a means to assist hospital
building nests with the material. patients or the disabled to drink liquids, to
In August 2015, a video was uploaded to stop the spread of germs and disease, and even
YouTube of a sea turtle found off the coast of as a hygienic way for bartenders to taste test

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