Plastic Straw Bans Upsetting People With Disabilities

Mindy Sparks
July 15, 2018

The plastic straw, an accessory for frosty summer drinks, sweet sodas and the ever-enjoyable iced coffee, has been falling out of popularity in recent years, faced with a growing repercussion over its effect on the environment.

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.

Most people are aware that plastic can not degrade back into the environment, but how much is really in our oceans? That's the equivalent to a garbage truck dumping plastic into the ocean every minute. Starbucks claims its use of cold-cup lids worldwide will keep over one billion straws from polluting the environment every year.


For people who need straws, materials other than plastic just don't do the job. Others say the ban would hardly impact the world's massive plastic problem and that Starbucks and other corporations aren't doing enough to take responsibility.

Starting from 2020, Starbucks is banning their plastic lids with straw.

"The new director's rule provides a waiver for flexible plastic straws, which can be provided to customers who need such a straw due to medical or physical condition", City of Seattle spokeswoman Ellen Pepin-Cato told CNN.

Though they've been a popular scapegoat as of late, plastic straws, however, do not make up a majority of plastic disposed of in the ocean, not even close, according to the same article .

Join us this Sunday, July 15 from 11:30 12:30 Union Square (25 Union Square West near 16th Street, at the end of the Disability Pride Parade) for a news conference/rally to urge the company to alter its plan to completely eliminate plastic (and all other) straws by 2020.

"We realized we had our lid after 10 weeks of experimenting", Emily Alexander, a global research and development engineer at Starbucks, said in the online statement.

So far, the new cold-cup-lids as straw replacement have debuted in more than 8,000 stores in the US and Canada and will be in stores worldwide by 2020.

Other reports by Iphone Fresh

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