Used for barely 20 minutes and discarded without a care into our waste system, it should come as no surprise that plastic straws are one of the top marine waste items found on our beaches, along with cigarette butts, plastic bottles, packets and fishing line.
They’re one of the most ubiquitous, unnecessary products on our planet.
Yet plastic’s not only a problem for coastal dwellers, because plastic waste lands up in stormwater drains, causing flooding, polluting waterways, littering the streets and ending up in our food chain.
It’s not biodegradable: plastic takes hundreds of years to break down into microparticles (which leach out harmful chemicals such as bisphenol A or BPA and concentrate toxins such as PCBs and DDT), that are mistaken by marine life as food.
Now the Ocean Basket seafood chain has taken leadership in the industry by banning its use, as well as plastic packets for customers to take their “doggy bags” home in by saying: “It’s the last straw”.
More restaurants, fast food outlets and retailers should get in on the action (and a couple already have, including Durban’s KZNSA Gallery Arts Café).
Of course, plastic straws are only part of the problem of single-use plastics and industry-driven bodies, such as the South African PET Recycling Company, do incredible work around recycling and monetising post-consumer polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastics, by ensuring companies manufacturing, importing or selling such products and packaging are responsible for them after their useful life.
While not all plastic can be recycled economically, Petco believes plastic should be valued by moving towards a circular economy model, rather than a throw-away one.
In a statement, the company said: “We have, with the support of our members, set up such a model for post-consumer PET bottles, which represents the most sustainable use of raw material through using recycled resin repeatedly in new bottles, thereby ‘closing the loop’.
“Through giving PET bottles a value, this model diverts them from landfills, creating much-needed jobs and saving landfill space and carbon emissions.
“We encourage consumers to participate in the recycling process, where possible, and to use their influence and buying power to demand products containing recycled content. By having more people active in the recycling movement, more bottles will be collected - diverting them from landfill - and recycled into jeans and T-shirts, or duvets and pillows, or even into new bottles.”
Recent footage of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and polluted Ganges River have supported predictions that by 2050 there will be more plastic waste (by weight) in our oceans than fish.
That plastic waste is carried in our waterways, forming swirling garbage patches comprising bottle caps, cigarette butts, fishing nets and line, Styrofoam containers, plastic packets, sweet wrappers and tiny microparticles, broken down over time by the sun.
Last year, researchers from Ghent University in Belgium calculated that people in Europe who eat seafood (they don’t say how often) ingest up to an average of 11000 tiny pieces of plastic annually.
They noted: “Worryingly, microplastics can be ingested by a wide range of marine organisms, which in turn creates an understudied risk of exposure for human consumers.”
And in 2016, a Plymouth University study reported plastic was found in a third of UK-caught fish, including cod, haddock, mackerel and shellfish. The European Food Safety Authority has called for urgent research, citing increasing concern for human health and food safety “given the potential for microplastic pollution in edible tissues of commercial fish”.
NOT-FANTASTIC PLASTIC: Iraqi Muslim pilgrims drink orange juice near the Grand Mosque in the Muslim holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, in this file picture. Ocean Basket is banning the use of plastic straws at its restaurants. Pictures: AP
In South Africa, an estimated 2kg of waste is created per person daily - second only to the US, John Duncan of the World Wildlife Fund SA’s marine programme told a panel discussion on plastic pollution at the Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town last July. He said consumers were largely to blame for contributing to marine waste, through their purchasing behaviour.
Professor Jenna Jambeck of the Environmental Engineering Department at Georgia University, a speaker at the discussion who attended the earlier African Marine Waste Conference in Port Elizabeth, said consumers must do more to limit their plastic waste. She believes banning plastic bags is not the answer.
“Bans and taxes raise awareness but don’t necessarily equate to behaviour change.” Case in point is the plastic bag tax in South Africa.
Shannon Hampton, the project co-ordinator for the International Ocean Institute, told delegates beach clean-ups might create awareness, but “we need to rethink our consumption”.
Her pet project, Beat the Microbead, was launched in 2015, to highlight the environmental effects of microparticles found in facial and body scrubs, toothpastes and some domestic cleaning products.
“Microbeads are confused for food by plankton, which are filled up by the beads which have no nutritional content and attract toxins. In South Africa, we conducted a study in sardines - the sample size was small (73) but it gave us a fair indication of what’s going on. Of those, 11 contained small plastic fibres and one had a 6mm piece of white plastic rod inside it.
“Anything that ends up in a sardine’s stomach is a concern because humans and fish are ingesting them.”
Proposals for plastic-free shopping aisles and avoiding plastic have been applauded, but the question remains: Is it enough?
Founder of the Lonely Whale Foundation and current UN Goodwill Ambassador, actor Adrian Grenier, who’s behind a “Stop Sucking” strawless ocean campaign, believes it’s a start.
He’s called for a switch from plastic straws to marine-friendly alternatives, like paper and reusable straws, and to challenge others to do the same.
Explaining the motivation behind the campaign, he said his attention was drawn to the problem when a waiter brought a glass of water to his table with a straw.
“It’s a gateway, a way to start,” Grenier said. “A lot of times people are overwhelmed by the bigness of the problem and often give up. We need something achievable for everyday humans.
“The challenge is if we can get rid of plastic straws, let’s start there. Then we can move on from there.”