I’m just gonna come out and say it: paper straws are terrible.

Normally I’d just end it there and not continue any further, but seeing these things again at a restaurant I went to recently got me thinking, especially after the “incident” I had with mine. If that sounds vague, it won’t in a few moments.

When I got my drink, a tall glass of Sprite, I was tempted to drink it straight out of the glass without using the straw. Only problem was that they gave me ice when I specifically asked them not to, which forced me to use the straw when I didn’t want to. My teeth are normally very sensitive to ice, you see.

The straw goes in, I start drinking, and things were fine at first. Drink was nice and cold, tasted just fine, and I was doing a crossword on my phone waiting for my meal. But within about 12 minutes, I look down at my glass, and I notice that there’s a bunch of white flakes at the bottom of my glass. I realize pretty quickly that it’s from the straw, but instead of doing something about it, I started drinking. Not my brightest moment, I’ll admit. The taste was ruined because of all the paper soaking into the drink, and I sat there really unimpressed. However, my meal ended up being very good in the end, so it wasn’t all terrible.

That being said, good food doesn’t make up for paper straws being bad. Look, when I go out and want to have a nice drink and I have to use a straw, I’d rather my drink taste like a drink and not like a math exam. I laugh about it sometimes, did the guys who came up with these things forget that paper basically melts in water? Probably not, but I still think it’s kinda dumb.

And honestly, the whole movement to replace all of these plastic items we’ve been using for decades (like straws) falls into the category of kinda dumb as well. I’m not saying that I outright disagree with it or don’t understand it, because I do. Plastic waste can take around an estimated 20-500 years to decompose, and even then it doesn’t really decompose, it just gets smaller and smaller. The reason for this is quite simple: the materials in plastic don’t exist in nature, which makes it far more difficult for natural organisms to break plastic down, since it’s an alien substance to them.

I also understand that there’s a large issue with plastic waste being dumped into the ocean, and that many sea creatures have died from ingesting plastic or getting ensnared by some. A good example is how plastic straws are dangerous for sea turtles, since turtles don’t have the best vision and they end up mistaking them for food. And unfortunately, since they don’t exactly break down, these turtles often die because their stomach is always full from the plastic, and so they think that they don’t need to eat.

However, I still disagree with the general notion of why plastic straws and other single-use plastic items are being replaced. It’s not because I think plastic is the way to go, it’s more so because of the vibes I get from it all. It all feels like corporate virtue signaling, in the same vein as all of the major companies changing their logos to rainbow-colored versions on social media like they did last month.

In case it hasn’t been made obvious to you over the last few years, these companies do not care about marginalized groups or actual social justice, and they definitely don’t care about you. We’re seeing a bunch of CEOs and investors trying to act like they’re in touch with society and act like they have our best interests at heart, when they really don’t. In the case of paper straws, it’s simply the result of caving to what I’d call the “eco bros” and churning out an inefficient product to satisfy them.

Now, before I start sounding a bit too negative, let me make it clear that I don’t want plastic waste to keep polluting the planet, and I don’t want sea turtles to keep dying from ingesting plastic straws. However, also keep in mind that overfishing and the process of fish farming have both been far more detrimental to the health of our oceans than plastic. We fish too much, we’re doing it faster than ever because of how large the market is, and studies have shown that if it keeps at the rate at which it’s going right now, the oceans might be completely devoid of fish by 2048. I’d argue that while fighting plastic waste dumping, there should also be a stronger emphasis on fighting overfishing as well. Fish is good for us, and we need to make sure that we still have it when our kids are all grown up.

Before I finish, I feel the need to present an idea. It’s something I thought about while in the shower a few days ago, and while I don’t think it’s a perfect solution by any means, I do think it’s one that has some merit to it.

My idea is rolling out metal straws instead of paper ones. Now yes, producing metal straws is far more costly and requires far more effort than producing paper ones, and if they were made the norm in restaurants, extra equipment would likely have to be bought in order to properly clean them. However, I would argue that the benefits far outweigh the flaws.

For starters, they are entirely reusable and can be cleaned thoroughly as stated above, similarly to metal chopsticks. This reduces waste by quite a lot and restaurants won’t have to keep ordering new straws all the time. Secondly, metal straws don’t release harmful chemicals into the environment like plastic ones do, which does lessen the amount of pollution in the overall environment, as it’s already been said millions of times that plastic and the environment mix about as well as bleach and vinegar. And finally, they’re entirely recyclable and are multi-purpose in the sense that they can be smelted down and used for other products in the future if needed.

Again, this idea isn’t perfect and has quite a few flaws that I haven’t brought up, but I’m not going to list each and every single one of them here. I encourage you to do your own research and see what I’m talking about, as it’s quite interesting and you’re guaranteed to come out of that knowing a lot more than you did before.

That’s all for now.