There’s a petition doing the rounds at the moment asking a well-known junk food chain to cut down on its use of plastic drinking straws (3.5 million per day in the UK alone).
Plastic pollution is in the news a lot these days, and so it should be. You’ve probably heard the prediction that, at the current rate, there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans by 2050. You’ve probably seen that harrowing video of the crew of a small boat painstakingly removing a plastic straw from a turtle’s nose.
Two thoughts occur:
When I was young, drinking straws were made of waxed paper. Surely that’s more environmentally-friendly than plastic?
Why does anyone – unless they have a physical disability which makes handling a cup or glass difficult – need to drink through a straw anyway?
