One time when I was in elementary school we went to a restaurant and my sister, my cousins and I tried to get as many straws as we could from the waiter. We had at least 20 straws each in our cups. The table was littered with straw wrappers and eventually the waiter wouldn't give us any more straws, but I'll never forget the laughs and smiles on our faces.
Every day people in the US use 500 million straws, which is enough to fill 127 school buses. There are only 325.7 million people in the US. That means there are more straws being used than people in the country. In fact, the average person uses 1.6 straws per day. And these 500 million straws take up to 200 years to decompose.
Each straw weighs about .42 grams. If you multiply .42 by 500 million and then convert that to pounds you get 462,970.75. Every day we are creating 462,970.75 pounds of waste. Every single day. One small little straw may not seem like a lot but it adds up quickly. So quickly that you end up with almost 463 hundred pounds of trash each day from plastic straws.
Once I realized how bad straws are for the environment I decided to stop using straws. When I first started my boycott against straws my friends and family thought I was crazy. How could not using one straw make a difference?
Let me show you. If the average person uses 1.6 straws per day than they would use 584 straws per year, which will surely make an impact. Imagine if every quit using plastic straws. We could eliminate 463 hundred pounds of waste from being created every day.
Straws aren't necessary to live. You can drink out of a glass perfectly fine without a straw. In fact, the only drink that needs a straw is a slushie and even then you could just use a spoon. Why use something so bad for the environment that isn't even necessary?
And just because I've given up plastic straws doesn't mean I've stopped using straws entirely. There are tons of reusable straws that you can use such as metal straws or straws made out of hard plastic. They are light and you can carry them around without causing too much of a hassle making them perfect to use at restaurants. You can even get a collapsable straw that is on a keychain.
Why not do something so easy? Why not stop using something so unnecessary? Why not boycott straws?
