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McDonald's To Test Plastic-Straw Alternatives in US Later This Year (usatoday.com)
Under pressure by environmentalists, McDonald's has announced that it will start testing alternatives to plastic straws at select locations in the U.S. later this year. From a report: The burger giant also announced that it will adopt more eco-friendly paper straws across all its 1,361 restaurants in the United Kingdom and Ireland, a region where the company started testing the alternative to plastic straws earlier this year. The regional rollout begins in September. Single-use straws are the scourge of the packaging-waste world because they don't easily biodegrade and aren't really necessary for most people when it comes to gulping a soft drink. The activist group SumOfUs estimates that every day, McDonald's alone dispenses millions of plastic straws that customers soon discard, leaving them to litter beaches or clog waterways and fill trash dumps.
... the new straws will be bayou-degradable.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
... the company started testing the alternative to plastic straws earlier this year
Some of us Slashdoters are old enough to remember a time before plastic straws. Yep, such a thing existed. Guess what we used, youngsters? That's right. Paper straws.
So you might say that plastic straws are the alternative to paper straws, and not the other way around.
Plastic straws? Taking up measurable landfill space? Contamination the oceans??
Most of the plastic in the oceans comes from a handful of Rivers in Asia. My guess is that it is manufacturing waste.
This is not a hard problem to solve, and it doesn't take stupid BS efforts like making a different kind of straw.
1. Implement, and actualize, heavy and escalating fines for littering.
2. Start negotiating a treaty that limits plastic discharge to oceans, similar to the existing open water treaties regarding contamination, with a comprehensive monitoring regime. Nations that fail to meet compliance goals should be fined and/or sanctioned.
Plastic straws take up a negligble amount of landfill space. If you want to reduce landfill usage, you need to start with the items that take up significant amount of space.
And if you want to reduce plastic contamination of the environment, you need to ban and monitor plastic emissions into the environment. Not shopping bags and straws in the first world only, but a global monitoring regime on ocean and sea discharge waterways with standardized sampling and metrics. Believe it or not, this would probably be cheaper than the faith-based remedies of reusable shopping bags and paper straws.
The idea that we need straws may be part of the problem. We drink from cans, cups, glasses, bottles etc without straws all the time. McDonalds should just stop using straws and make the lids for their drinks out of paper.
Charge $5 for the cup, don't charge for the soda, or charge a nominal amount. People will start bringing their own reusable cups or bottles very quickly.
Or (assuming they're not doing away with lids), design the lids like takeaway coffee lids -- tear out a portion to have a small "hole" for drinking.
... NoneOfUs can have nice things.
It's pretty obvious that this is coming from the group of people who are hell-bent on restricting people's freedom of movement. How are people supposed to be able to move freely about the country if they can't eat and drink while driving?
plastic straws of course degrade in nature, polypropylene and polyethylene especially so in sunlight...but will decompose anyway.
might be slower than we like, but they do go away
It is now officially the future. We have flying cars, food in pill form, and carbon fiber. Surely someone can figure out a way to make straws out of carbon fiber? Or use paper (like they did in the bad ol days of straws that collapsed basically on contact with the substance they were designed to be used with,) but maybe coat them inside and out with wax, so the water in the beverage does not directly contact the paper layer? Maybe geometry is the answer, instead of a round-in-cross-section straw, use a triangular one. Or, I suppose it might be possible to adapt human lips for forming a seal with the edge of a drinking vessel and imbibing fluids THAT way, eliminating the need for a straw in the first place. Just a thought.
Lips, To Drink, From Cup, At MickiDees!
?
So don't drink and drive!
Waxed paper straws were a thing long ago. They probably still are a thing.
But, we found out that plastic straws were better for many reasons and now they are ubiquitous.
The problem - if it is really a problem - is people dumping straws on the beach or in the water. As someone who has spent their entire life on the coast I've yet to see this for myself. But, if people are actually doing that, they need to be cuffed in the head.
Also, I take issue with the; "aren't really necessary for gulping a soft drink". The present state of cup/glass handling makes the rims unsanitary in most restaurants. . The number of times I see stacks of cups being handled with grubby paws and having things dripped/splashed on them is ridiculous. Also, in the places where glass is used, people seem to have forgotten that you don't put your filthy - just handled money and picked your underwear - fingers on the rim of a glass. But, everywhere I go, holding the glass by the rim is standard operating procedure for the disgusting waitstaff. You will provide me with a straw, individually wrapped to maintain sanitation, or you will not get my business.
Also, for the hipsters with the reusable stainless steel straws. That's fine for your own use when you're willing to take the sanitation risk with your own (inadequate) cleaning. But for those that think it might be viable for commercial use in standard restaurant dishwashers... NO. Hell no!
I'm not an activist about almost anything (privacy, I'm looking at you!) but this is a thing I can get behind. I've been on dives and collected trash. I do a dive every year specifically to collect trash. The ocean is a pretty amazing place and the amount of litter in certain places is depressing (not hyperbole). I picked up a variety pack of silicone and metal straws and we keep those in the car. I get weird looks and have to explain it a couple times that I don't want a straw but it's not really a big deal. If I'm seated at a place, I use my mouth hole.
Paper is great and biodegrades. Washing is simple too though. It's not like anyone proposing taking something away without an alternative (like bags). We can do a pretty good job with recycling paper products too, so we don't even have to slash a bunch of forests to get there. All in all, this should be a non story.
You run out of straw before you run out of drink. First they came for your bags, now they're coming for your straws, next in line are spoons and forks, then lids. The militant environmentalists won't be happy until you are eating with your fingers off the floor.
Back in my day we used Papyrus, and WE Liked It!
You have no idea how hard it is to suck an Asp through a Papyrus Straw!
Where I live, it seems everyone has one of those 30oz RTIC / Yeti / Ozark cups within 6 inches of them at all times with a hard plastic self-retaining straw. Many gas stations give you a small discount for filling one of those rather than using one of their cup and straw combos. Fast food places should follow suit.
The cups and lids have more plastic by volume than straws ever will; you hipster, millennial morons are focusing on a feel good item instead of actually addressing a real problem.
When I was a young whippersnapper, we would drink drinks by pressing the rim of the glass to our lips and tipping it up at an angle calculated to bring the liquid just in contact with the aforementioned lips, between which we would then slurp the aforementioned liquid.
I know it sounds crazy, but it's true.
// This is not a sig.
What about straws made of straw?
In the RepubliK of Kalifornia we now pay 10 cents for grocery bags. On the positive side the bag quality and size has improved 100%. I would pay a dime for an old sKool McDonalds straw which was 100% better than current straws to the point people regularly saved them, cleaned them out, and reused them at home!
How the fuck can anyone be so geographically retarded that they think Louisiana is part of Asia?
I am pretty sure that you won "stupidest comment of the day" contest. Holy fucking shit, get a map, or at least go browse maps.google.com for a while, or crawl back into your mom's rancid cunt and finish making your brain cells and then go look at a map, if you can't make sense of them yet.
Could the American-led global war on drugs be partly to blame? We could have had biodegradable hemp-based plastic straws and bags by now.
Just eat them! No trash
The amount of plastic in the oceans is negligible and the space consumed in landfills is virtually nothing, compared to so many other plastics and pollutants. It's really a non-issue. Yet, this topic keeps resurfacing on many levels. My local government - who literally wants to inject effluent into the drinking supply as a disposal option - is considering a ban on plastic straws to protect the beaches. This despite the fact that I've never seen a discarded straw on our local beaches, let alone in the water. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I'm saying that it's a VASTLY overblown issue. But, the topic keeps coming up, including a Green Peace campaigner knocking on my door a couple of days ago.
I'm thinking that the subject is a red herring. Someone is trying to distract from something, or has a money making agenda that banning plastic straws will forward. Is there a waxed straw lobby?
You run out of straw before you run out of drink.
for the vast majority of humans, that pretty much stops being a problem at about age six or so
sorry about your developmental disability
I'm sticking to using C notes to snort with, fuck a bunch of plastic.
The amount of plastic strawsin the oceans is negligible and the space consumed by them in landfills is virtually nothing, compared to so many other plastics and pollutants. It's really a non-issue. Yet, this topic keeps resurfacing on many levels. My local government - who literally wants to inject effluent into the drinking supply as a disposal option - is considering a ban on plastic straws to protect the beaches. This despite the fact that I've never seen a discarded straw on our local beaches, let alone in the water. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I'm saying that it's a VASTLY overblown issue. But, the topic keeps coming up, including a Green Peace campaigner knocking on my door a couple of days ago.
I'm thinking that the subject is a red herring. Someone is trying to distract from something, or has a money making agenda that banning plastic straws will forward. Is there a waxed straw lobby?
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As I've gotten older, my gums receded. My teeth became very sensitive to hot & cold temperatures. For the most part I'm okay with food, but drinks are just hell on earth. So I started using straws. Now the liquids no longer touch my teeth.
As my children got older, we had a never ending series of spilled drinks while they tried to drink. As an adult, you wouldn't think it would be that difficult. As a young child, who cannot sit still, it is. Straws again are a lifesaver!
The question we should be asking is why this trash is ending up in the ocean and not recycling or the incinerator?
And why Straws are a problem, but all those plastic cups & lids & plates & silverware & wrappings are fine?
Hope the new ones can be popped like the old ones.
Given the sheer volume of straws cranked out by the fast-food industry, this can only be a good thing. Paper straws work just fine for single-use. And if you don't like paper straws, buy your own plastic ones. Better yet, buy one meant to be reused. A simple change for McDonald's, but it will have a huge impact in reducing waste.
"every day, McDonald's alone dispenses millions of plastic straws that customers soon discard, leaving them to litter beaches or clog waterways and fill trash dumps."
Plastic straws don't kill beaches. People kill beaches.
Why not just eliminate them altogether? We don't drink coffee with a straw so why not create a sippy lid for pop? The sad part is that this isn't about the straw its really about lazy people who toss their garbage out the window of their vehicle creating pollution. But let's blame the straw, like we do guns, and while were at it. Let's blame alcohol for traffic deaths, and the Sun for baking to death kids in automobiles. God forbid we ever blame human's for anything.
Isn't it beautiful how the progressives are the most aggressive proponents of taxing the poor?
They will be testing the acceptance of paper straws in the US. They already committed to removing them in the UK.
Paper straws are horrible after they get wet.
I get "plastic" cups that are really made out of some kind of corn fiber. They work great even after several refills. Why can't straws be made of the same material?
Agreed. For such an easy-to-replace item, plastic straws make up a surprising amount of the plastic that becomes pollution. There are already plenty of solutions possible: waxed paper, biodegradable plastics, etc. One problem with a biodegradable plastic bottle is that it might biodegrade before you really want it to - but a biodegradable straw does not have this problem. It won't be needed for more than a few hours from the time it is deployed. Straws are a really easy place to start with an impact that is disproportionately large for the effort that is put into making the change.
I use a titanium straw, use a cotton tipped applicator to clean it. Amazon has many metal straws for sale.
Clearly, that post must have been the last straw for you.
So far, I haven't seen what the alternatives being considered actually are. McDonalds seems to be relying on 'straw on request' rather than replacing the plastic straw with something else. How about straw straws?
For a reusable straw, I use a piece of recycled neoprene hose I got for free from the auto parts store.
If you've ever ordered a " milkshake " from McDonalds, then you'll know why their plastic straws are so awesome.
They are the only straws on the planet that allows you to drink said milkshake due to how dense the damn things are. :P )
On occasion, even these super-straws can't cope with what is effectively " Flavored Sand " and they collapse under the stress.
( it's a safety feature so your head doesn't implode from the vacuum you're creating
Paper straws will never hold up to this type of abuse. They'll need to thin out the MS recipe at the very least. :D
That'd be cool.
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Gold Straws - gives new meaning to golden arches
Substituting their plastic-like food for the real thing would be an improvement.
Suck on the beef straw and then eat the beef straw!
to keep tearing the paper straw about a half inch at a time.... drink fast.
You're welcome.
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
MacDonalds: Hey! We've found a replacement for our plastic straws! they're just as good as the plastic straws and biodegradable.
Reality: new straw is crappy, doesn't work well, and stops functioning after ten minutes.
Moral: never trust any product being sold on it's moral value. It doesn't have to hold up in quality, it just has to make people think they're saving the planet/eliminating hunger/ bettering humanity.
We have to bring our own shopping bags some places, why not straws too?
Why don't they make the straws built into the insides of the cups already?
Of course, slurpees will still need their own shovel/straw, but something needs to be done about brain freeze anyways.
Do not put your mouth on that "straw" in the blindfold test in the store room.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
stupid culture
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I just don't get why coffee comes with a sipping lid, and soft drinks always come with a straw. Maybe the first step is to ditch the straw and just go for a sipping lid for soft drinks.
Now I understand that when driving, the straw and lid works quite well against spilling, but seriously, people like old women, who can't leave the house with their tiny bottle of water, and yet, still must have a straw in it as well. It's like as if they'll die of thirst if they don't get their teaspoon of water that instant.
Just tax the crap out of it and make these suckers pay!
While its easy enough to say "oh we could live without straws" There's those with physical disabilities who need them in order to drink. So they kinda can't live without it. A non-plastic straw is LONG overdue to be made ubiquitous.
My wife sells metal Norwex straws. We have them coming out of our ears at home. They're nice, but I don't see them getting handed out at restaurants.
Not sure there are any really good plastic alternatives for restaurants giving them out for free.
Paper straws are not great. People don't like them, and that's really their business AFAIC.
MCDonalds is one of the world's biggest toy retailers. Plastic crap to lure the kids so they pester their parents. What about banning that crap? Would make a much bigger difference! (Unless of course they've stopped peddling that crap? I someow doubt they would stop such a money-spinner though.)