Fig. 1

Recently plastic straws have received a lot of heat through news and especially social media. Due to the speed and power of social media and the internet it is almost a trend or meme to hate plastic straws. The huge retaliation against them — even thoughts of a ban — should not be just another internet fad, we as a society can not let it die out either.

When we toss our plastic straws into the garbage they do not decompose nor do they biodegrade. Even worse, the BP used to make some plastics makes the material unable to be recycled; plastic straws however, are just too small to be recycled. Recycling companies even ask for the straws to not be placed in the recycle bin due to the fact that they just fall through the machinery. Due to this, plastics sit in landfills and float around the oceans in little fragments for many years. Plastics have invaded the oceans due to our reckless usage of them, it has become so bad that there is an ‘island’ of plastic in the Pacific known as the Great Pacific garbage patch. In addition, most of the plastics that we use can most likely end up in the noses of sea turtles and the stomachs of fish.

There already have been numerous cities to ban plastic straws and replace them with paper ones. But are the straws the only threat? While straws are taking all the heat, cigarette bud filters continue to rank the top plastic found in the ocean. In 2017 the International Coastal Cleanup found 2,412,151 cigarette buds compared to 643,562 plastic straws (see Fig. 2). They are easily the most littered item in the world. People put out and throw their cigarette bud on the sidewalk without even thinking twice about the plastic in them. From there the buds end up in the drains and into the oceans where they stay for hundreds of years because just like straws they do not easily decompose.

Cigarette buds were marketed to the public in the 1950s as a way to reduce the risk of getting cancer from smoking by blocking toxins. However, this proved useless as the filters lessen the nicotine which smokers were addicted to. Scientist, therefore, reduced the effectiveness of the filter to allow consumers to feel a stronger hit of nicotine. Basically, the tobacco industry is using filters as a marketing technique while the health impact of them in nonexistent.

While plastic straws are a major threat to our environment, the attack against them should also be expanded to other major plastic items that pollute our oceans and destroy our environment.

Fig. 2