Today has been drinking straw day! The famous holiday…of straws…
So this one took a little bit more planning than I anticipated as the UK has recently banned disposable plastic ones so I couldn’t just pick some up at the supermarket.
In England, it is estimated that annually we use 4.7 billion plastic straws, 316 million plastic stirrers and 1.8 billion plastic-stemmed cotton buds. An estimated 10% of cotton buds are flushed down toilets and can end up in waterways and oceans.
Even though non-plastic alternatives are readily available, these single-use plastic items are used for just a few minutes but take hundreds of years to break down. Cleaning up the effects of littering costs local Government millions of pounds every year.
In order to eliminate these items from use, the Government intends to introduce a ban on their distribution and sale. The ban would come into force at some point between October 2019 and October 2020, subject to the views collected during consultation.
In the end David was my saviour when he swiped some from a McDonalds near his office last night. And they say romance is dead! I forgot to drink my cup of tea this morning with a straw as I was half asleep but bought a milkshake this afternoon as it seemed an appropriate drink to drink with a straw. I then later had another cup of tea using it. The heat was a bit wierd through a straw and the slight strawberry after taste was also…odd. The paper straw wasn’t holding up too well after that so I abandoned it half way through.
Trying to remember to drink through a straw and the practicalities were a bit difficult but I hadn’t fully appreciated just how many plastic straws had been being used before. I also hadn’t really considered the effects of single use cotton buds and although I’m sure a ban will be coming in the near future that would have forced me to change, I’ve gone ahead and ordered bamboo ones today!
All in all, regular straws 0/10, paper straws 6/10.
(I believe metal straws may be the way of the future if you are into such things. As I’m not overly attached though, paper will do me fine on the occasions where I can’t go without!)