By Mackenzie Grizzard | Staff Writer
A $10 tip later, you’re sipping on your iced oat milk latte through a paper straw. Sip after sip, you choke back that chalky paper taste, reminding yourself of all the turtles you’ve saved by your brave sacrifice.
We are saving the turtles, right?
In theory, yes. Plastics do pose a significant threat to sea-life, according to the Sea Turtle Conservatory. By now, everyone has seen the viral video in 2015 of that poor sea turtle with a plastic straw lodged up its nose. It’s heartbreaking, to say the least.
But if all 8.2 billion people in the world used two plastic straws a day, that would be around 16 billion. Double that number again and you’ve got around 33 billion — which is how many pounds of plastic enter the ocean every year.
Compiled with the 75 to 199 million tons of plastic waste currently floating around in our oceans, the one paper straw you occasionally get with your coffee is not going to make a dent.
The fact of the matter is you can’t put out the flames of a burning planet with a paper straw.
This isn’t to say you should completely abandon all thought of the environment, because if anything, we need more of that.
But the real problem is much bigger than that — it’s multi-billion dollar corporations using their consumers as scapegoats as they bleed our planet dry.
That sea turtle video is often credited as the catalyst for the paper straw renaissance after it sparked global outrage. By 2018, companies like Starbucks, Alaska Airlines, Disney, McDonalds and IKEA all announced plans to phase out plastic straws.
The anti-plastic straw campaign might have been one of the most effective in history, with the vast number of corporations from all different sectors banding together.
But that’s where it gets interesting, because you don’t see Big Oil banding together to phase out their money-makers despite being responsible for thousands of oil spills a year. None of the 36 companies responsible for over half of the world’s carbon emissions are rushing towards policy change either.
So, why? Why was it so easy for dozens of major corporations to phase out plastic straws in the span of a few years, while Big Oil continues to poison our oceans from behind the scenes?
Here’s the answer, plain and simple — money.
It’s easy to phase out plastic straws from a business model when those drinks are still being mass-distributed in plastic cups. That $8 scone might have come in a paper sleeve, but it was bulk-transported in plastic wrap.
So while we, the consumers, feel great about doing our part to lessen plastic waste, production doesn’t skip a beat and business carries on.
Starbucks didn’t see a decrease in profits after eliminating plastic straws, and based on a quick Google search, none of those other companies did either.
The reason why the paper straw campaign was so successful is because it makes it easy to shoulder the environmental burden back to us — and quite honestly, we deserve a chunk of that blame too.
More demand, more production. If you demand more $2 tops from SHEIN, they produce more. If you demand more same-day shipping from Amazon, they produce more planes and trucks to make it happen.
With every gluttonous demand, more habitats are destroyed to make room for mega-factories and production plants. The ozone layer chokes on carbon emissions from the ships, trucks and planes needed to fulfill your expedited shopping haul.
Does that paper straw taste better now?
The only way to lessen our environmental footprint is to stop over-consuming. You don’t need so much of everything. These corporations only produce and pollute as much as you demand — so demand less.
Live simply is the best advice I could give. Don’t give in to the lavish luxuries you see on social media. The only “green” our economy cares about is the dollar, and one day, we are going to wish we cared about the green on the trees a little more.
So when the oil rigs run dry and our oceans are filled to the brim with waste, it won’t just be because of plastic straws — it will be because of us and our gluttony.
No single person or company is responsible for the environmental predicament we’re in. It was a collective effort to destroy as much as we have, and it will be a collective effort to remedy it.
It starts with a little bit of introspection. Don’t stick with the performative environmentalism of drinking from a plastic cup with a paper straw and calling it a day.
Instead, think about the rest of God’s beautiful creation that might suffer from your choices. Don’t post about getting able to enjoy a beautiful spring day as you continue to over-consume.
It starts small, and it starts with you. Our Earth is uniquely and wonderfully made just like we are — so let’s treat it the way God intended.
