Eating out at restaurants is a delicious way to celebrate or spend time with others, going out to buy a refreshing cold coffee from Starbucks is a daily occurrence for some coffee addicts, and fast food drive-throughs are a simple and cheap convenience that millions take advantage of to get a quick meal. Lots of Americans enjoys at least one of these pleasures weekly, if not daily. Each of these things involves a beverage, and what comes with all of these beverages is a small plastic straw. These plastic straws are a large waste because they are not recyclable and take years to decompose, yet millions of people use them daily. It may not seem that these tiny plastic tubes would make much of an impact on the environment, but the amount of these straws that are used and then discarded into landfills and the ocean is astounding. Plastic straws are very harmful because they are negatively impacting wildlife and the environment, yet there are solutions to this plastic straw epidemic that any person could apply to their own lives to help the environment one less plastic straw at a time.
The amount of plastic that is in the world is causing major problems for the earth. Plastic particles are getting into food, causing unknown health risks. Littering is a crime but plastic trash is still seen in the streets causing problems constantly. Plastic bags thrown out can block drains, which then block sewerage systems and can lead to flood and diseases spreading. All of these things are damaging the environment and is costing the world’s marine ecosystem around 13 billion dollars a year (The Chemical Engineer, 2018, p.8). The Chemical Engineer describes plastic as favorable since it is so convenient, but they also describe that, “…of the 9bn t of it that has been produced since the 1950s, only 9% has been recycled. Around 12% has been incinerated, and the remaining 79% is either dumped in landfills or in the environment.” (The Chemical Engineer, 2018, p. 8). According to this article, by the year 2050 there will be 12 billion tons of plastic in landfills and scattered around the environment (The Chemical Engineer, 2018, p. 8) Plastic is such a huge problem in our world since it is barely recycled properly. If people began to help the environment by cutting out a small form of plastic in their lives, such as straws, it would make a huge difference. Because even though they seem small, plastic straws have become a huge issue in America.
Every year about 182.5 billion straws are used in the United States alone. That would be about 500 million every single day. This amount of straws would fill around 46,400 school buses every year (Cress, 2018, para. 1). That’s an insane amount of straws that are being thrown away into landfills and our oceans when they’re not properly disposed of. The reason this many straws are being wasted is because America has become prone to utilizing one-use products, such as these plastic straws. Cress cites in his article, "plastic straws are made of our dwindling oil resource, and simply by offering them instead of serving one with every drink automatically, we can reduce our consumption in half or more." (Cress, 2018, para. 3). Almost every single restaurant offers its customers plastic straws. Maybe if sit down restaurants stopped offering plastic straws, and only gave them to customers who asked for them, the number of plastics straws used might cut down a good amount.
After interviewing a tooling technician in a plastics factory, the process of how plastic straws are made was more clear. He told us that straws are made by extruding polypropylene plastic through an extrusion die. Which is a type of tooling, very similar to a mold. Big machines that push plastic through these dies are extruders. These extruders have to run in order to make these drinking straws. Extruding plastic consist of a lot heat and force. The polypropylene is heated to around 250 degrees Celsius to become pliable enough to be pushed through the die. Then big strong hydraulic cylinders use a screw to push the plastic with around 3000 psi through the die. Then the plastic comes out the other side of the die in a big long continuous straw. The straw is endless when the extruder is running, until raw material is no longer fed to the extruder. Then the straw is stretched out and cut with pneumatic cutters. (G. Nolf , personal communication, November 21, 2018).
We also asked what kind of energy is used to make straws, to see if the production of straws is also an issue with conservation. Greg told us that the heat used to make the plastic pliable is electric heat. The Hydraulic cylinders takes an electric motor to run the pump. The pneumatic cutters take electric to run the compressor for a consistent supply of compressed air. The tooling has to be kept in doors and is typically very large, so a lot of lighting is usually required. Extruding straws uses a lot of electrical energy. A lot of the energy used to produce straws is made from non-renewable resources. (G. Nolf , personal communication, November 21, 2018).
There’s no mystery when it comes to marine life being affected by pollution that some detrimental effects do take place. Around 268,940 tons of plastic remnants can be found floating in our oceans. Obviously more than plastic straws are being thrown into the ocean and creating waste. If everyone were to take an active interest marine life would be affected to a minimal amount compared to now, marine life’s playground is a bunch of used straws and plastic bags. (E. Marcus, & L. Laurent, & C. M. Carson, 2014, p.1)
The process of how plastic straws are made is pretty simple but very expensive and terrible for the environment. According to (Hugh, 2018, par.3) “Over 390 million plastic straws are used in the U.S. on a daily basis.” Shockingly of those 390 million about 600,000 of those straws end up in the Ocean every day. Marine life is greatly affected by this, straws are alarmingly the 11th most littered pollution in the Ocean overall. It takes hundreds and even thousands of years for the majority of plastics to decompose, because they are not biodegradable (The Chemical Engineer, p. 8).
Unfortunately, around a million seabirds succumb to plastic pollution in just one year (Plastics Statistics, 2010, BP. 3). “Seabirds can ingest as much as 8 percent of their body weight in plastic, which for humans "is equivalent to the average woman having the weight of two babies in her stomach," says Hardesty of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation” (Borestein, 2018, para. 6). Not only animals above the aquatic surface get affected by this atrocity. Deep below the surface, turtles are affected in a negative way because as they scrounge for food they run the risk of consuming a plastic straw. If a turtle were to ingest a plastic straw what would follow is the animal attempting to cough it up resulting in the plastic getting stuck in their throat and killing them. These animal casualties could of obviously been avoided if individual’s would of switched to reusable straws. Reusable straw kits are affordable and can be found on websites commonly used like amazon as well as other retail stores by just doing this it can help save the lives of millions of marine animals.
Another problem revolving around plastic straws is that they are non-recyclable, so they can only be thrown into the trash. This is because plastic straws are most commonly made out of polypropylene. Polypropylene is a type of plastic that is found in food packaging and because of the short term use of the products and the high demand for new products only 1% of it is recycled (Leblanc, 2018, para. 10) . Unlike other plastics like HDPE which is the most commonly recycled type of plastic (Seamen, 2012, para. 7). Some companies are trying to change their ways in order to positively impact these grim statistics, “In July 2017, Proctor & Gamble announced a partnership with PureCycle Technologies in building a PP recycling plant in Lawrence County, Ohio. The goal was to recycle polypropylene into "virgin-like" quality.” (Leblanc, 2018, para. 11). Efforts made to increase the percentage of PP recycling around the world will help reduce the chances of polypropylene products reaching the world's waterways. It will also reduce the need for new PP to be produced which will greatly help the environment.
After conducting a survey in the local area about plastic straw, an idea of how much our community is using straws use. 30 different individuals were asked these five questions. The first question was, “Do you use plastic Straws?”. This question averaged 90% yes and 10% no. The second question was, “How many plastic straws do you use a week?” The answers ranged from zero to fifteen, with the average number being seven. This means that out of the thirty people we surveyed, about one straws is being used per person every week. The third question was, “Do you think straws have a negative impact on the environment?” about 23 percent didn’t know that plastic straws harm the environment (didn’t know or didn’t think it had a negative impact?). The fourth question was, “Did you know that plastic straw pollution plays a part in animal injuries and fatalities?”. This question was the most interesting, with an average of 43 percent of the people asked didn’t know that plastic drinking straws end up hurting and killing animals. The final question was “ Are you willing to use an alternative to plastic drinking straws?”. Unfortunately the average for people saying yes wasn’t 100 percent it was only 83 percent. I did ask the reasoning for not wanting to use an alternative and I received about the same answer from each individual. There response was it was normal plastic straws are too convenient.