The Predicament of Plastic Straws
Sunday morning beach runs are somewhat of a tradition for me. Not only do I get to spend a few hours by the ocean, but I can also set physical goals and work towards achieving them every week. As a conscious environmentalist, I of course halt as often as I see a piece of rubbish on my way, in fact, as the participant in dozens of beach cleanups, the halting is somewhat of a familiar motion for me when at the beach.
As I come closer to graduating high school and leaving behind the forever-lasting presence of my family at home, I try more and more to involve them with what used to be time spent alone. As a result of this, I invited them on one of my scheduled Sunday morning runs. I knew well that there would be more walking and talking and less running than I was used to, but with my family, there is never a dull experience. So I expected a day of inappropriate jokes from my mum, intertwined lessons of mathematics and philosophy from my dad, and an unlimited supply of strange questions from my sister. But as always, my family surprised me in ways I was not prepared for.
Walking along the shore, I soon came to realise that there was so much more plastic hidden under piles of sand than at first meets the eye. One piece soon became two, then three, and soon enough my sister and I had pockets full of trash. Within a short period, we had collected a series of objects that ranged from birthday balloons to plastic plates, and came to realise that the most prominent beachside disruption was the plastic straw.
500 million straws are used in the US everyday, and as we continue to grow a society of fast paced consumerism, this number grows rapidly. In fact, plastic straws have become so commonly used that we often expect them in our drinks without a request and it is this unawareness of their prominence that makes them so dangerous to our ecosystems, especially as they can be transported by wind and water so easily.
So after talking to my family about ways of alleviating some of our trash that possibly reaches the shores, I recently began to use stainless steel straws. They are easy to take with me on the go, they are cost effective, and I can be certain that they won't find their way to ocean for me to pick up on another family beach run.
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