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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.

5 of 270 comments (clear)

  1. For those living in Louisiana ... by CaptainDork · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... the new straws will be bayou-degradable.

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    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  2. Alternative? by mchall · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... 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.

    1. Re: Alternative? by cre1mer · · Score: 5, Funny

      Dollar bills?

      Only when you order Coke.

  3. Olden days by saltydogdesign · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

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    // This is not a sig.
  4. Re:Thoughts from a diver by Creedo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Underwater aesthetics should decide how we all live our lives?

    On behalf of the rest of the goddamned planet that has to pick up after shit stains who quip about this, please feel free to go fuck yourself. Too bad short sighted fuckwits aren't the only ones hurt by their asinine and selfish behaviors.

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    All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.