What's the Deal with Straws?
- Rachel Thompson
- Mar 11
- 6 min read
My brother and his family live part-time on the island of Oahu. A few years ago, in 2022, my oldest daughter and I flew to Seattle and stayed a few days before continuing our trip to Hawaii.
It didn’t take much time in the city to realize how environmentally conscious West Coast Americans are. In particular, I realized that restaurants weren’t offering straws. When we made our way to the islands, I noticed a similar trend there—if you wanted a straw, you had to ask for it. Restaurants and coffee shops aren’t just going to give you one.
One month ago, on February 10, 2025, President Trump issued a presidential action stating:
An irrational campaign against plastic straws has resulted in major cities, States, and businesses banning the use or automatic inclusion of plastic straws with beverages. Plastic straws are often replaced by paper straws, which . . . use chemicals that may carry risks to human health [and] are more expensive to produce. . . . Additionally, paper straws sometimes come individually wrapped in plastic, undermining the environmental argument for their use. It is therefore the policy of the United States to end the use of paper straws.[i]
So this has led me to ask: What’s the deal with straws?
After my trip to the Pacific Northwest, I honestly didn’t give much thought to them. I noticed the difference while I was away, but because restaurants in Tennessee still use plastic straws—pretty ubiquitously—I just readapted to being home and moved on with my life.
Yet with the president’s new decree, which at first glance feels like a step backward regarding climate change and global warming prevention, I was prompted to dig into this a little bit. Here’s what I’ve discovered so far.
Two Key Ideas
1. Plastic straws are a small part of the problem—but they’re still a problem.
Okay, so let’s define the problem.
According to Rob Jordan, a writer for Stanford University’s School of Sustainability, “Plastic waste . . . cover[s] as much as 40 percent of Earth’s ocean surface” and so “growing public concern has inspired movements to ban single-use plastics, most notably straws.”[ii] In the same article, Jordan rounds out this concern with this quote provided by Jim Leape of the Stanford Center for Ocean Solutions: “Plastic straws are only a tiny fraction of the problem – less than 1 percent.”[iii]
National Geographic supports this, but with an even smaller estimate: “Eight million tons of plastic flow into the ocean every year, and straws comprise just 0.025 percent of that.”[iv]
So the problem is, a major swath of our oceans is inundated with plastic.[v] A small percent of that plastic is straws; however, globally and nationally (U.S.), this “small percent” is a big number—to the tune of 415,957 plastic straws and stirrers collected globally by participants of the International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) in 2023[vi]. And this number has grown over the past several years (the 2016 cleanup reported 409,087 straws/stirrers[vii]) despite major cities like Seattle and companies like Starbucks either banning or phasing out plastic straws.[viii]
Also, for what it’s worth, in the U.S., the number of straws/stirrers collected during the ICC ranked higher (#6) than in the global report (#7).
To recap: plastic in our oceans is a problem, and plastic straws are a regular (and growing) contributor to this problem. Okay, now what?
2. Straws, for most people, are a convenience item only.
I think now is when we consider whether we can help: Can I cut back on my use of straws? And honestly, it’s kind of easy for me to answer yes—because, for me, straws are mostly convenient, not necessary.
I mean, sure, there have been times in my life when I needed a straw—when I’ve been injured or had a recent surgery, for example. Maybe I couldn’t lift my head, and I needed a straw to help me sip water. But even then, looking back, I probably could have skipped the single-use straw and used my own.
Do other people need straws? Absolutely. Not everyone can drink from the side of a cup, and that’s 100 percent understandable. Do some occasions warrant the single-use straw? Probably. I’m not going to argue that this could never be the case. But I would argue that’s not the case 100 percent (or even most) of the time for most of the population. And honestly—not that I have data to support this—the percentage of times we need a single-use plastic straw might be closer to 1 percent. Just a thought.
All this to say, if straws are mostly a convenience item (for me at least) and if straws are having a negative impact on our oceans, causing harm to plants, animals, and people, maybe I can forgo the plastic straw?
Where to Go from Here?
Well, I guess my next question is What does it look like to not use plastic straws? I mean, like I said, in the South they’re seemingly everywhere. Any restaurant you dine in, with the exception of very few, provides you a (usually plastic) straw whether you asked for one or not.
So here’s some tips I found courtesy of the Plastic Pollution Coalition[ix], founders of the Last Plastic Straw project:
Commit to saying no. When you order your meal or a drink, tag on the words “No straw, please” at the end of every order. The habit will build over time.
Bring your own straw. You can keep a straw in your car for drive-through drinks, or ladies, in your purse. In restaurants, you likely won’t need one.
Ending Where We Started
And, real quick, can we circle back to the president’s change in policy from a month ago? I’m now wondering: Maybe this isn’t in the president’s lane? Hear me out.
Whether or not we use plastic straws wrapped in paper or paper straws wrapped in plastic—it sounds from his presidential action statement that both have their problems—really seems to sidestep the issue, which is: Why am I using a single-use straw at all?
The president can’t control this. He can’t make a decree telling me to stop using straws. (Or maybe he can, but that would be incredibly hard to enforce.) But I can. I can commit to saying no, to bringing my own straw if I want one or when I need one. I can commit to contributing one less plastic straw to the ecosystems of our oceans, and so, it won’t matter what kinds of straws are being produced because, either way, I won’t be taking one.
And maybe you choose this too. And maybe someone else. And then . . .
Over time, we won’t need a presidential decree about the kinds of straws to procure because, well, we won’t be using them. And so our time, money, and resources can go toward something better, something more helpful, something our world needs that can offer a little hope. 💛
To come: I want to challenge myself to “30 Days Straw Free” with the hope of extending these 30 days into more . . . of course, I will let you know how it goes!
Notes
[i] The White House, “Ending Procurement and Forced Use of Paper Straws,” February 10, 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/ending-procurement-and-forced-use-of-paper-straws/.
[ii] Rob Jordan, “Do Plastic Straws Really Make a Difference?”, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, September 18, 2018, https://sustainability.stanford.edu/news/do-plastic-straws-really-make-difference.
[iii] Jordan, “Do Plastic Straws . . .?”
[iv] Sarah Gibbens, “A Brief History of How Plastic Straws Took Over the World,” National Geographic, January 2, 2019, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/news-plastic-drinking-straw-history-ban.
[v] For more on why this is a problem, search “plastic in oceans” and you should be able to find a quick set of resources explaining how plastic is negatively affecting oceanic plant and animal life, not to mention our food (because of microplastics contaminating fish and other seafood). But for a more visual approach, you might want to watch this viral video (discretion advised!) on one sea turtle’s experience with a plastic straw: Sea Turtle Biologist, “The Sea Turtle with a Straw in Its Nostril—No to Single Use Plastics,” YouTube, November, 1, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MPHbpmP6_I&t=1s.
[vi] The publishing date of the report is 2024, but the findings are from 2023 cleanups. See Ocean Conservancy, “International Coastal Cleanup: 2024 Report,” accessed March 11, 2025, https://oceanconservancy.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/ICCAnnualReport2024_Digital.pdf.
[vii] Ocean Conservancy, “International Coastal Cleanup: 2017 Report,” accessed March 11, 2025, https://oceanconservancy.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/2017-ICC_Report_RM.pdf.
[viii] Gibbens, “A Brief History.”
[ix] “The Last Plastic Straw Movement,” Plastic Pollution Coalition, accessed March 11, 2025, https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/the-last-plastic-straw-movement.
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