Plastic Straw Usage & Impact

Due to relay campaign in social media, several large companies in the world issued policies that prohibit or limit the use of plastic straws. Campaigns to reduce plastic waste have been heard, but the harm of plastic straw usage is still being underestimated.

Dependence on the use of plastic bags has become a hot issue in various countries in recent years. Plastic waste can pollute the environment in a very long time. The nature of plastic that is not easily decomposed makes this type of waste a serious problem.

Plastic generally takes 500-1,000 years to completely decompose. So the first plastic produced by humans, if it is still oscillating in the ocean, remains in the same form as when it was produced.

But people mostly forget the other forms of plastic that have been easily used and thrown away lightly: plastic straws. Plastic straw is one of top 10 waste item that involve in water pollution.

In the data compiled by Eco Watch, approximately 500 million plastic straws were discarded every day after one use. Plastic straws fall into the category of plastic products which 50 percent are discarded when finished.

US citizens itself throw 175 million straws every day. While in the UK there are an average of 3.5 million plastic straws per day produced by McDonald's customers only. The amount will boost up if combined with other fast food restaurants, plus other fast food restaurants in Europe, then in the world.

This amount is fantastic yet worrisome because, in the Eco Watch record, so far only five percent of plastic production can be recycled. The rest is dumped carelessly. As a result of littering the culture that is still a daily behavior, even plastic straws are littered on land and sea.

Together with plastic bags, which consume up to 500 billion people per year or 1 million per minute, used plastic contributes 60-80 percent of total marine waste. Plastic straws are always included in the top 10 rubbish that pollutes the ocean. So piled up, of the total area of ​​the earth's sea, there are now 46,000 plastic wastes per square mile.

The next scenario is easy to guess: this pollution disrupts the lives of marine animals. 44 percent of seabird species, 22 percent of marine mammals, all species of sea turtles, and some documented fish species have plastic waste on their bodies, either swallowed or permanently attached to their bodies. Even worse, plastic waste kills at least 1 million seabirds, and 100,000 marine mammals and turtles each year. Single use plastic material is designed for lifetime worth. In long-time span degraded into small particles (microplastic) which accidentally eaten my plankton or fish. Microplastic chain is to be eaten by fish eaten by human, causing various health issues such as cancer which has carcinogenic characteristic. Corals which covered by plastic for 4 days will die eventually.

An image shown on how plastic waste disrupts marine animals lives

While new environmental issues emerged later. And from year to year environmental issues are rapidly increasing and give birth to new initiatives for the sake of environmental cleanliness and the safety of marine animals.

In Indonesia, the issue of the danger of straws is not too popular. In developed countries such as the United Kingdom, a number of non-governmental organizations have begun to move actively to make people aware that they no longer use straws when buying drinks outside the home.

The Straw Wars, for example, collaborates with prestigious restaurants in London such as Soho not to hand over straws to buyers and will only give if requested. In practice fast food restaurant consumers drink "while on the move", do not care about the garbage, and there are still very few restaurants that have special garbage collection.

In response to that, Starbucks announced that the coffee company would eliminate the use of disposable plastic straws throughout its stores starting in 2020. Instead, according to the Independent, Starbucks would use a beverage cover that allows customers to drink coffee without having to use straws. This predicted to be a big help to reduce 1 million plastic straw being thrown each year.

In addition to Starbucks, there are many other large companies that have helped set a ban on disposable plastic straws. McDonald's, for example, prohibits the use of plastic straws in all its restaurants chain in the UK and Ireland in 2019.

Hotels like Hyatt and Hilton are other examples of companies that implement a ban on disposable plastic straws. According to cbsnews.com, guests must request plastic straws starting this September, because the hotel will only give it if there is a request.

While a lot of campaign emerging to stop the usage of plastic product, there is no words as of to stop plastic production at this moment. We need a large-scale and diffuse approach that questions the culture of disposing of garbage, and the tendency to buy more, bigger and more often.

Avoiding the use of plastic straws may seem trivial, but it is still important.

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D’Alessandro, N. (2014) 22 Facts About Plastic Pollution (And 10 Things We Can Do About It). Retrieved from https://www.ecowatch.com/22-facts-about-plastic-pollution-and-10-things-we-can-do-about-it-1881885971.html

Sampathkumar, M. (2018). Starbucks will stop using plastic straws by 2020. Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/starbucks-drinking-straw-plastic-environment-drink-recycle-waste-a8438861.html

Langone, A. (2018). http://time.com. Retrieved from http://time.com/money/5343736/how-many-plastic-straws-used-every-day/