Town launching “Stop the Straw”

Town launching “Stop the Straw”

Feb. 22, 2018) The nonprofit Ocean Conservancy estimates that more than 500 million straws are used daily in the United States, then discarded, with many ending up in the oceans.

On Nantucket, that translates to approximately 3 million straws in July and August alone, selectman Rita Higgins said.

According to the World Economic Forum, 80 percent of ocean debris is land-based, and 80 to 90 percent of that debris is plastic. If no measures are taken, by 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than sea life, it predicts.

Starting tomorrow – National Skip the Straw Day – the town is hoping to do something about it.

In cooperation with the Maria Mitchell Association and ReMain Nantucket, it is launching Stop the Straw, which hopes to reduce unnecessary waste and protect the oceans from plastic pollution by asking businesses and restaurants to provide straws and cocktail stirrers only when asked or get rid of them completely, or replace them with compostable paper straws or reusable options.

To read the complete story, pick up the print edition of this week’s Inquirer and Mirror or register for the I&M’s online edition by clicking here.
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STOP IT! Just stop it! There are 300 million people in the US. No way are 500 million straws being used daily. Stop it.

Starbucks Bans Plastic Straws, Winds Up Using More Plastic

2018 will forever be remembered as the year that hating plastic straws went mainstream. Once the lonely cause of environmental cranks, now everyone wants to eliminate these suckers from daily life.

In July, Seattle imposed America's first ban on plastic straws. Vancouver, British Columbia, passed a similar ban a few months earlier. There are active attempts to prohibit straws in New York City, Washington, D.C., Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco. A-list celebrities from Calvin Harris to Tom Brady have lectured us on giving up straws. Both National Geographic and The Atlantic have run long profiles on the history and environmental effects of the straw. Vice is now treating their consumption as a dirty, hedonistic excess.

Not to be outdone by busybody legislators, Starbucks, the nation's largest food and drink retailer, announced on Monday that it would be going strawless.

"This is a significant milestone to achieve our global aspiration of sustainable coffee, served to our customers in more sustainable ways," said Starbucks Kevin Johnson CEO in a press release announcing the move.
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Article continues to debunk the idiocy.

Effort to Ban Straws in Sandwich
HARWICH – The Sandwich Green Coalition is meeting with the Town’s Board of Health in an effort to ban plastic straws in Sandwich.

The meeting is scheduled for Monday, September 10th at the Sandhill School, the group says the reason for the proposed ban is to reduce pollution and protect wildlife.

The Coalition will be presenting information on the reasons for the proposed move at the meeting, the group led a successful effort to ban plastic bags in town several years ago, it says the reasons here are similar.

The public is invited, it is scheduled for 7 pm.
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Based upon data from a 9 year-old. Infinitesimally small amount of plastic.

In Memoriam: Saying Goodbye to Metal Straws, 2018’s LiveStrong Bracelet

I am susceptible to suggestion. Especially the suggestion that, with very little effort, I can change the world for the better. So I stopped using plastic straws.

2018 was the year I learned that Americans use 500 million disposable plastic straws every day. That the world’s shorelines are littered with 8.3 billion plastic straws. Right now, by some estimates, 8 million tons of plastic float in the oceans. I was under the impression that all the plastics I dutifully dump into blue plastic bins are immediately recycled, but that is also wrong. Only nine percent of plastics are recycled. The remaining 91 percent will haunt the earth for thousands of years.

I was educated about the existential horror of plastic straws by social media. I watched a viral video of a plastic straw slowly being pulled out of the nose of a sea turtle. Then I realized that videos of animals suffering and dying from the excess of man-made plastics are everywhere. (The New York Times recently covered this one… have fun: “1,000 Pieces of Plastic Found Inside Dead Whale in Indonesia.”) I will confess that it took me a moment to connect the dots: the environmental havoc mankind is wreaking on the earth—whether it’s pollution or global warming—is going to work its way up the food chain to you and me. Internet people with PhDs in Internet Opinions were quick to explain that halting catastrophic environmental change was a two-step process and one of those steps was definitely eliminating plastic straws.