Straws!
 

My husband and I are now asking servers at restaurants to please hold back the straws. After reading the facts about how many straws we use in the U.S. each year - 500 million DAILY - enough to circle earth 2.5 times! And they for the most part can't be recycled and end up in our landfills and our oceans. The Great Pacific garbage patch is twice the size of France and contains nearly 80,000 tons of plastic. I hope people will read this and will also ask their servers to hold back the straws.

I wish those flimsy one time use bags from ALL RETAIL STORES would get banned and force people to buy reusable bags; that would cut down on a lot of plastic waste.

That's definitely the last straw.

We try to always remember to take in our reusable bags. A habit I got into working in the Bay Area. There no one gives shoppers bags. You can purchase them or bring your own. That’s the way it should be everywhere.
I do love using a straw, but will be changing to a Bamboo or glass straw that I carry with me.
I read the same article as the OP and it’s frightening how huge the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or Pacific Trash Vortex actually is. They believe it is the size of Mexico. And we still don’t recycle or stop using shopping bags. Reflects pretty poorly on us all.

I prefer straws.
 

I prefer to drink through a straw at public restaurants for sanitary reasons. Too many food preparers handle drinks by the rim of the glass.

That’s another reason why I will be carrying my own!

If you got these "facts" from the internet, then they must be true. :ohdear::22yikes::rolleyes::sigh:

Next someone will want hand sanitizer's at each table.
For you germ a phobics..Just imagine how many germs have been transmitted by the simple act of pulling you chair up
let alone a server handling your glass

Last they shouldn't have tooth picks at the door..Imagine how many trees will be save.
Or they should pass a law..Tooth Picks can only be made from storm damaged trees

How about the lemon they put in your tea. Do you think it clean before it went in.

I think they should have hand sanitizers at the table. Some of the salt and pepper shakers are disgustingly sticky, never thought about the chairs but you are right. I like that fact that Lowe's has them at the entrance to clean the shopping cart handles.

Not quite straw-related, but...

About 20 years ago (during a period of countless air miles), I was on a SWA flight...going....somewhere. Time for beverage service and I asked for my usual Diet Coke.

The middle-aged Flight Attendant came back with the tray of filled plastic cups. I noticed that her routine for serving was to place one of those small napkins centered directly on the rim-then she would "claw" the drink from the top, only touching the napkin, and pass it over. I noticed that she did that each time.

Later on I spoke with her. She said "that's how I was trained". I wrote to the President of SWA complimenting her by name and recommended that this be a Standard in flight service. Got a boiler-plate letter back.

Imagine the bacteria and germs that could be transmitted by a busy FA hands over the flight time - especially the hand-to-mouth incidental contact during that drink-sip. Among the countless ways to pick up illness 'up there'.

I know you're just trying to be facetious, but the internet has allowed everyone to do their own research, determine what are actual facts and not depend on what "someone said"...which is often driven by emotional , knee-jerk reactions with an agenda.

Some people don't want to know actual facts and are happier that way, while other, more intellectually curious people...do.

Put me in the column of...Facts Matter.


As for straws, they are but one component of the trash fouling our environment...with personal water bottles being another. :ohdear:

Does anyone remember paper straws? They were biodegradable. It seems one of our giant live oaks could make a lot of paper straws and there would be no need for social action. If I carried a glass straw in the bottom of my purse, I am pretty sure I would die of an unspeakable illness. I have no idea what's been down in there. Or is down in there at the moment.

It's actually been determined, with scientific study...to be even bigger than that.. :ohdear:

Great Pacific Garbage Patch now three times the size of France - CNN

I've had people recently told me paper straws were being used in restaurants again. I watched an add about some poor sea turtle that had plastic straws stuck in his nostrils which was causing him to partially suffocate. I think his prank with his turtle friends went amiss!:a20:

Great Pacific Garbage Patch now three times the size of France - CNN

I saw some report that a French swimmer who swam across the Atlantic 2 years ago is trying to swim across the Pacific going through this garbage patch to draw the public's attention to the problem.

He does take a break every so often from swimming on the boat that accompanies him.

French man to cross Great Pacific Garbage Patch on 6-month swim - CNN

You can have my straw when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

I'm 70 years old. Never ever saw sanitary wipes outside stores until the last decade. If I made it this far, I don't think I'm gonna worry much about making sure my push cart handles are sanitary in the future.

Said the head of the NSA (national straw association).:D

I used to drink water thru a garden hose, how on earth did I live so long? :thumbup:

It would be easy to use Dotti's approach--buy your own reusable or recyclable straw. Plastic straws are being banned in several countries. Hope the US will follow suit, but somehow I doubt it.

According to Serve Safe and state and local health codes all employees mush wash hands when exiting a rest room returning to work?

But everything else is sanitized

Great Pacific Garbage Patch | OR&R's Marine Debris Program

Great Pacific Garbage Patch - National Geographic Society

I love this. I am going to follow your lead.

Is it in warm water or cold ? Can I lay some sod and develop it ?

You are so bad!!!:D

I remember paper straws. I remember the ones we used were white and had a spiral red stripe going from top to bottom.

And you could unroll them, when as a kid you became impatient...about getting your meal. :angel:





:D

Yes! Thanks for that memory.

Plastic straws have been banned in Malibu, Davis and San Luis Obispo, California, Seattle, Washington and Miami Beach and Fort Myers, Florida, so the movement is growing slowly in the U.S. (from the New York Times, 3/3/2018).

Wonder if anybody actually read the articles. Over half the debris is from fisherman's nets and 20% of it is because of the tsunami in Japan. How do straws in the US get into the Pacific Ocean garbage patch again ? Are those greenies on the left coast dumping garbage in the ocean ?

Plastic straws are number 11 on the list of the most plastic found in the ocean. They are very hard to recycle because there isn't a market for the type of plastic they're made of. (Of which they're made--for Bare & her mother.:smiley:)

The plastic garbage in the ocean existed long before the tsunami. The point is to stop using so much plastic needlessly, and then a tsunami wonuldn't pose as much of a problem.

In my former little town on Lake Michigan, the campaign is for each person to pick up and dispose of 3 pieces of discarded plastic from the beach every time you go.

I am TOLD, WAS told by people older, that people would send their kids over to the local pub in the evening to bring back a pitcher of beer. Maybe we should bring our own containers for pop? (soda) to the grocery? To eliminate pop bottles? I still wear my old comfortable clothes a lot and reuse whenever I can. I don't throw out leftovers until they are green. We continue to use our old, not energy efficient washer and dryer so that we don't waste all that money and good parts still working.

The buckets are called Growlers. I remember as a kid no older than 11 my father and his brothers would send me to the local bar
in Glendale NY with their Growler to get them beer. Boy times have sure changed things

Yes, straws are a problem but nothing compared to millions of plastic water bottles and single serve plastic coffee pods.

amen

Thanks Perron no, my thoughts exactly. Remember the 80-20 rule. Always work on the problems that will give the biggest gain.

Rollie

Exactly!!!:bigbow: Further it is easier to drink through the straw than trying to drink without the ice cubes getting in the way.

I am concerned though about the waste, so the server should ask if the customer wants a straw or not.

Ha ha! We never lived close enough to a pub, and I probably would have spilled it on the way back.


All the places we have lived (except here? I'm not sure) have filtered water stations in the grocery stores, where you bring your own gallon jugs to be filled.


Water filtration systems in houses make it possible to do away with buying water in plastic bottles.


I like the reduce, reuse, recycle philosophy.

I have seen servers lick their fingers when picking up menus. Also servers exit bathrooms without washing their hands. My son told me that while working in a kitchen when he was in high school, servers and cooks spat into the food when customers irritated them.

[sarcasm on] I’m glad money is so clean when we use it. I read on the internet that if you put all the money end to end it would go from Fenney to Alpha Centuri ( but not back). Definitely should go to Electronic money only. They have also found e-coil in hand sanitizer according to the internet. [sarcasm off]

Please don’t get sprayed by the irrigation water. It smells like [emoji90]