It’s The Final Straw

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Under the Ocean is a campaign ultimately seeking to BAN Plastic Straws.

 “Why straws?” you ask, well, if you think straws might seem like a small, insignificant piece of plastic to be concerned about when we could be focusing on larger items like plastic bags or bottles, think again. Over 10 000 000 plastic straws are used in Australia every single day.

That’s:

  • 10 million bits of plastic waste produced every day that can’t be recycled. As Polypropylene – the type of plastic used in straws – is not processed by most recycling facilities.
  • 10 million more pieces of plastic entering our oceans or contributing to landfill.

 

but it doesn’t have to be this way.

As a society, we actually have no need for plastic straws. There are alternate, biodegradable and eco-friendly options already in existence, but it seems they’re overlooked because they’re slightly more expensive.

FACT: Some biodegradable straws can decompose within 35 days, while plastic straws can take 200 years, and even then never fully break down.

Still not convinced?

FACT: Plastic marine pollution is responsible for the death of over 100,000 sea mammals and one million seabirds every year through starvation, ingestion or entanglement from ocean plastics.

 Did that convince you?

How about the fact that: there’s an estimated 150 million tonnes of plastic spread throughout the world’s ocean already, increasing by 8 tones every year – the equivalent of a garbage truck full of plastic every minute worldwide.

In fact, it is estimated that by 2050, the amount of plastic in the ocean will outweigh fish, but, like I said before, it doesn’t have to be this way.

 

So, I hear you asking, what difference will banning plastic straws make?

While straws and stirrers are only one of the top 10 items found in the ocean, banning them would set a precedent for further legislative action against disposable plastic. 

Make the change, say no to straws #StrawNoMore #Sipitdontsuckit

 

KF

 

 

 

10 thoughts on “It’s The Final Straw”

  1. I am somebody who is fighting for a very similar cause. I have done a lot of research on plastic pollution in our oceans, but somehow, it never gets easier reading the statistics. It will always be something that I feel very strongly about, and something that I wish people would become more aware of. I will admit, I always knew plastic bags were bad for the environment, but I overlooked the fact that straws aren’t much different. I guess everybody does. It’s such an original topic to be creating awareness about. The perfect world would include all fast food restaurants COMPLETLY REMOVING their straw dispensers… I feel like this especially would make a huge difference. It’s also easy to understand that there are so many plastic straws being used daily since they’re like… $3 for a pack of 100 at the supermarket. Maybe they should TAX THE STRAW… as well as TAX THE BAG!!!! Only in a perfect world…

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    • Thank you for your contribution! A plastic tax would be ideal, as it would apply to all plastics, and if it was high enough, it would reduce consumption significantly! In the mean time however, plastic bags NEED to be taxed! I take my own reusable bags with my shopping – why can’t everyone?!
      Exactly right! Fast food restaurants count in my take away petition as the drinks can be removed from the venue – it really would’ve ideal to get rid of them and have them replaced with paper straws! So much more eco friendly 🙂
      Straws may only be small, but banning them could lead to much bigger changes!

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  3. Hello, I’m doing something similar too but mine is focused on polystyrene instead. One of the problems with the plastics is that it just doesn’t get recycled sometimes, so it ends up as litter thrown away by careless people and it ends up in the environment and the oceans. I don’t know if it has much of an impact but dentists recommend people to use straws when drinking fizzy drinks to protect their teeth which may increase consumption. Other than that, there’s some traction over in the USA on banning plastic use and the plastic ‘tax’ over in Aldi and Hong Kong. From memory, I think it was New York City, San Francisco, and Washington DC that has completely banned polystyrene consumption because it was a non-renewable source, it was producing too much litter, killing the wildlife that ingest it, a carcinogen, and it was not economical to collect, transport, then recycle, and only most recycling plants don’t accept the plastic. Aldi and Hong Kong charges customers that prefer to use their plastic shopping bags for convenience. Perhaps you have use these two as examples to help reinforce your ideas? ie the resulting ban has seen a much needed decrease in pollution and accidental wildlife ingestion, and incentivising BYO shopping bags.

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    • Thank you for your comment, you are right – a lot has been done around the world against plastics and non renewable resources but it seems Australia is quite slow to catch up. However, Australia could really be considered the ideal country in which to implement such changes as we share no borders, meaning that if we got rid of polystyrene and other plastics, the only risk of them entering the country would be through imports, and so further changes and legislature would have to be implemented to prevent such items from entering the country. Keep an eye out for a blog post soon which will be detailing some of the efforts made around the world to combat this issue and their effectiveness.

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