Save the turtles! I’m sure we’ve all heard this phrase and seen images of turtles and other sea animals with plastic straws stuck in their nose or some other place on their bodies. They also sometimes mistake colorful plastic straws for food and completely ingest them. Straws aren’t just harmful to turtle noses either, as when littered and left outside for hours on end, these straws break down into pesky microplastics through constant exposure to sunlight, salty water, and high temperatures, and harm the entire ocean. Microplastics end up in the immune systems of the sea animals we eat, so every little straw you throw out or litter can end up back in your body as a microplastic.
The production of these straws is also bad for the environment, as nearly 500 million straws are used by people every day in the U.S. alone. They are used and thrown out at an extremely high rate, but are so small and can be picked up by wind very easily, meaning they can be blown out of garbage bins and landfills into surrounding areas, causing pollution even when some of the said straws were thrown out. They are not biodegradable, and can’t be naturally broken down by bacteria and other decomposers, so they continue to be a threat to animal life for years on end, especially when they become microplastics.
So, there’s been a surge in eliminating plastic straws, and either switching to paper straws or using lipped cup lids. But, it is unclear whether these paper straws actually worth the hassle and in the end better than plastic straws.
Single-use
Paper straws are still single-use, like plastic straws, so if we completely swapped them for plastic straws, America would be consuming 500 million paper straws every day instead. This equates to a higher demand for paper, and a higher demand for an extremely slow renewable resource in lumber. Because of their paper structure, they are also less reusable as a single-use straw, as the wood becomes saturated by your drink, and loses its efficacy as a straw. Single-use plastic straws can still be used multiple times, unlike paper straws.
Although they’re paper, they aren’t necessarily recyclable and biodegradable
Paper straws are thrown out at the same rate that plastic straws are thrown out, and cannot be separated to be recycled once they’re thrown out. Thrown-out paper straws also can’t biodegrade correctly, as they end up in landfills—which are all designed to prevent decomposition—and sit in heaps of garbage for years until they have a proper opportunity to decompose. Even if paper straws end up in recycling plants, most recycling facilities don’t accept food-contaminated materials. Used straws are easily contaminated as they soak up drinks, so they are very often labeled as unacceptable by recycling facilities.
The form of paper straws isn’t completely safe
For paper straws to work as straws for even a few minutes and to avoid immediate soaking, they are treated with a water-resistant coating. This coating is ingested with every sip of your drink and is categorized as a toxic “forever chemical” that can leach into your drink. These coating chemicals are also sometimes known to be linked to different diseases, including several cancers and other immune problems. We don’t know too much about their long-term effects, which could potentially be an issue in the future if paper straw use still increases.
Obviously, any kind of single-use straw is not good for the environment, regardless if it’s paper or plastic. It’s also difficult to determine which of the two is a less harmful method, as plastic is continuous and takes decades to decompose, but paper straws use up one of our most precious renewable resources in lumber. I personally think the best option at this point is silicon or metal reusable straws, which can be washed and used as many times as possible after just a single purchase. Now these reusable straws may be inconvenient, but a slight inconvenience is pretty minuscule compared to the harm caused by the production and use of plastic and paper straws.
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I personally despise paper straws and find them incredibly counterintuitive. As you mentioned, they get saturated by my drink in minutes, thus causing me to use multiple just to enjoy my drink. The whole point of a paper straw is to save the environment, but you end up using more than needed because of its short lifespan. As a result, more trees are being cut down and the environment is harmed anyway. Thank you for exploring the downsides of paper straws. I think they need to be discussed more because they are often overlooked. I love using straws and prefer them to a lipped cup. While I usually just resort to plastic straws, I love using silicone and metal straws too (in fact, I have several in my dorm!). I know that it causes a lot of pollution to make metal straws, but the reusable nature of them, at least in my opinion, outweighs the temporary cons of production. Great blog!