Easy come, easy go?
First of all, aren’t straws great? The flexible little drinking tube that adds pizzazz to an ordinary lemonade, colour to a cocktail and fun to a children’s party. Furthermore, in most pubs & coffee shops you don’t even need to ask for a straw, they accompany your drink with compliments! But what is their effect on the environment?
Amazingly, it is used for approximately 20 minutes, and then the straw is dumped.
“So what?” I hear you say, “it’s recycled!”
The Ugly Truth
In actual fact, few, if any straws ever make it to recycling. Most are made of the wrong type of plastic for recycling and consequently end up in landfill sites. Many end up in our rivers, seas & oceans.
Every year, volunteers all over the country take part in beach clean-ups. An Taisce runs an initiative called Cleancoasts to help maintain our beautiful beaches and to keep them litter free.
Most noteworthy, on our beaches, the most common material found lurking maliciously is … plastic.
And one of the top 10 items? ….Plastic straws.
Yes, these innocuous, single-use drinking tubes are washing up on our shores at an enormous rate and damaging our environment! In fact if you laid them end to end, our plastic straw litter would stretch the full length of The Wild Atlantic Way!
Probably not the image of an eco-friendly island we want to portray, or the legacy we want to leave for the future, right?
Be the Change!
There is some good news though, there are alternatives, and we at EcoStraws.ie are supplying them by the thousand. Choose from a wide range of reusable EcoStraws including Stainless Steel, Glass, Bamboo and Silicone or 100% biodegradable, disposable options such as Wheat, PLA, and Paper, and we even stock Edible Straws. We also stock a range of collapsible EcoStraws which you can carry in your pocket, purse, or handbag.
So finally, why not join the revolution to rid Ireland and indeed the whole world of nasty plastic straws. Take that first jump with us, help protect our
