Happy April! No, this is no April Fools joke; your eating and drinking habits are destroying the planet. So unless you have been living under a rock, you probably would have heard of Bretman Rock who has a following of over 18.2 MILLION followers on instagram. One of the merchandise he used to sell were metal straws. This merchandise was marketed as a part of his own individual “Save the Turtles” campaign. But why have plastic straws suddenly become the public enemy? How do plastic straws damage the environment? Are metal straws really better for the environment then? While researching on this topic, I came across this fantastic video that I want to share and discuss with you! The video is quite long, so you don’t have to watch it if you don’t have the time.
In 2018, there was a massive movement to ban plastic straws. The logic was simple; as a society, we consume way too much single-use plastics- some of which inevitably end in our waterways causing water pollution. This is detrimental to marine life and can cause animals to choke or get stuck in these foreign plastic items. Straws account for about 0.025% of the 8 MILLION TONS of plastic that enter our oceans annually. The ban of single-use plastic straws was the first step to reducing marine pollution.
In the video, the producer interviews Takunda Chitaka, a PhD fellow at the University of Western Cape. She researched the environmental impacts of making straws from different materials. Chitaka employs a lifecycle assessment of different types of straws and employed a breakeven analysis to understand the true impact of straws from different materials in South Africa. A lifecycle assessment means that the impacts of consumption were being calculated right from how the beginning. These means that all the processes leading up to consumption like raw material extraction, and manufacturing processes, as well as processes that occur after consumption like if the item is recycled, thrown away etc. are being accounted for to calculate the true environmental impact of consumption. At around the 3:33 mark in the video, a diagram showing this framework was shown:
Chitaka found that a metal straw would have to be used 37 times to be equivalent to plastic straws. This is the breakeven point for metal straws. Because of the environmental impacts of mining, refining and processing, the environmental impact of metal straws is surprisingly much larger than one would imagine. As mentioned by Chitaka in the video
You might as well use 20 single use straws if you are not going to use your metal enough times.
For glass straws, they had to be reused 23 times to reach the breakeven point. However, glass straws are not as durable as metal straws which increased the likelihood of it never reaching the 23 times point before shattering. She also found that single use paper straws were more sustainable than single use plastic or PLA because they were less resource intensive. However, they are incredibly flimsy and disintegrate in your drink after a while. Furthermore, she highlights that while PLA or plastic made out of corn has been marketed as biodegradable, its marine biodegradability has not been proven.
Chitaka’s findings illustrate the importance of not just following trends for the sake of following trends. You have to figure out how these trends play a part in your lifestyle to see if they would actually benefit the environment. If you’re someone who rarely uses a straw, buying and owning a metal straw much actually be worse for the environment. Furthermore, if you own multiple metal straws this impact will be magnified. But if you are someone who uses straws regularly, consider the different types of straws before purchasing one and make sure to bring it everywhere you go!