Straws have become as common in restaurants as napkins. It’s kind of odd in a way. You may be dining in a pretty nice restaurant but you will be sucking your drink with a cheap plastic straw. This wasn’t always the case. The use of straws has grown at incredible rates and now several organizations are asking that you start enjoying your drinks without the straw.

Why Straws Suck

Out of all the problems in the world, why would people pick a fight with the tiny straw? The truth is, your tiny straw is joining 500 million other straws to make a giant pile…every day! That’s right, Americans are using and discarding over 500 million straws each and every day. If you connected those straws they would circle the Earth two and a half times every single day.

Our world is piling up with discarded plastic. A lot of that plastic is ending up on our oceans. At the current rate of consumption, our oceans will have more pounds of plastic in them than pounds of fish before the year 2050. Who cares? You should. The ocean supports an incredible percentage of our ecosystems (which we need to stay alive by eating).

But let’s look at the straw. Do straws really make up a high percentage of plastic waste? No. Not even close. However, the straw has characteristics that make it worse than many other plastics. Because of its size, very few plastic straws are actually recycled. And some recycling plants can’t handle plastics that small anyway. Secondly, because of the small size of straws, animals often mistake them for food and ingest them. The straw does not break down inside the body and ends up harming them. Plastic straws are one of the most common pieces of trash found in the ocean and on beaches.

If that is not enough suck-y information on straws, then think about how a straw is made. Straws are plastic so they are made from petroleum. The more straws made, the more oil needs to be extracted from the Earth. Therefore, the environmental impact from straws is negative on both ends of a straw’s life.

Why do we even use straws?

You may wonder why we even use straws in the first place. When you think about it, straw use is kind of strange. However, it is not a new practice. Scientists have found evidence of straw use going back at least 7,000 years. Some of those straws were even made of gold. Those probably were not thrown out! One of the first common uses of the straw was developed so that people could avoid drinking bugs that landed in their drinks. The bugs floated so the straw kept the bugs from going into your mouth. Pretty smart.

Straws really became popular when diseases like Polio were rapidly being spread. People did not want to use a glass that may have been used by somebody with the disease so straws were given out. Now we have a better way to prevent the spread of polio and many other diseases – vaccines.

These days, while some people with certain health conditions really benefit from the use of straws, most people use straws as a preference and not a need. What is interesting is that we have been used to using straws only for certain things. You rarely see anybody drinking hot drinks with a straw. You also rarely see anybody use a straw to drink juice. What’s the difference? It turns out that it is just habit. To be fair though, habits are very difficult to break.

What is the solution?

Stop using straws. It will take a while to get used to but you really don’t need a straw. Now you may say that without a lid and straw your drink will likely spill all over your car when you hit a bump. You are probably right. For this to be practical in cars, beverage lids need to be made with a little opening to drink out of. This is what we do for hot drinks so why wouldn’t this work for cold drinks?

Of course, the better solution is to stop using disposable cups all together. Carrying your own reusable cups is far better for every reason. However, it is understandable that sometimes you are out and about and don’t have a cup to use. Your next best option is to forgo the straw.

Some things to think about

To conclude, let’s reflect.

Refusing straws at a sit-down restaurant is super easy and the right thing to do.

Refusing straws at a drive through is not so easy. So, this brings up a few questions. Would fast food restaurants design their lids so that you can drink out of them without a straw? It seems easy but people need to ask. Secondly, can you take in a reusable cup to use at a fast food restaurant instead of getting a disposable cup? Looks like this needs some further testing.

This is one thing where you can easily make a difference. Refuse the straw whenever you can.

Mike Szydlowski is the science coordinator for Columbia Public Schools.