Two Maplewood restaurants last week said that they’re no longer giving out straws with drinks — diners will need to ask.
In Maplewood, The Crow’s Nest, The Blue Duck and Robata have all announced on Facebook that they’re cutting out straws for environmental reasons.
The Crow’s Nest supplied these “fun facts” about straw use:
- 500 million straws are used and discarded every day in the United States alone. That’s 175 billion a year filtering into landfills (environment) and littering our waterways and oceans.
- Single-use plastics like straws are used once, for a few minutes, then last for hundreds of years
- Plastic doesn’t biodegrade – it just breaks into tiny particles that are absorbed and eaten by aquatic animals, making their way into our food system
- By 2050, plastic will outweigh fish in the ocean
- Plastic from to-go orders is the source of 269,000 tons of plastic pollution in waterways and our oceans
This article makes me wonder, once again, why styrofoam isn’t banned? Maybe we all could start a Maplewood ban on it.
Straws here, go into recycling or landfills. If restaurants don’t recycle plastic, glass, or aluminum already, they were/are lazy. And their owners/managers are jerks. Gas stations around here are horrible with that, also. If we don’t recycle, WE ARE THE PROBLEM!
Wow, I had no idea about these ‘facts’. I say ‘facts’ in quotes because I don’t see a citation but even if those numbers are off by 50% I still say WOW!! I’ll be honest, I do use straws-(my dentist even told me to use them to protect my teeth-I have no teeth now so take what you will from that…LOL). Whenever I get a to go cup I generally tell them no lid or straw because I keep a thermalish mug with me most of the time and when I get to the car I just pour it in so there’s no need for the extras. Thinking now I might start just bringing my cup in with me so I don’t even need their cup whether it’s plastic or styrofoam.
Also Doug, in the first paragraph it should be diners not dinners.
Thanks. Always appreciate those catches.
Way to go!
There used to be a commentor here on 40South that went by the name Yojimbo. I haven’t seen him post anything in a long time, but I know he would appreciate it. He vowed to not eat at Gus’s chicken because of the styrofoam plates. He probably never did. The point is, I like how people in this community care about small stuff like this.
This is great. I rarely use straws, don’t drink sodas. I love to compost. Styrofoam drives me nuts. Sometimes I use styrofoam cups to start plants for the garden.
What a great community…go, Maplewood!