Pollution: the final straw

After an exhausting day of school, you go to Starbucks for a refreshing, cold drink. You get your favorite beverage and pop a plastic straw through the hole of the lid. Enjoy your time left with these straws because they’ll be gone by the time juniors graduate.
Recently, Starbucks took a major step in reducing environmental pollution by vowing to remove all plastic straws in their stores by 2020. Cups for cold drinks will have a recyclable lid with a raised lip for drinking, similar to a sippy cup. These new lids are already available in 8,000 stores across the U.S. and Canada for their nitro-infused drinks. The franchise also invested $10 million to develop fully recyclable hot drink cups, but there is no set date for the release.
Starbucks received backlash from customers wondering why the new recyclable lid uses more plastic than the original lids and plastic straws combined. At first glance, the new idea seems to be pointless. With further research though, using more plastic is not the problem at hand; it is the size that matters.
Recycling plastic is possible, but due to the small size of plastic straws, the single-stream recycling machines are unable to sort them into the recycling center. Thus, Starbucks’ sippy cup lids use more plastic to create a greater surface area in order for it to undergo the recycling process. More plastic, in this case, ensures that plastic recycling will take place.
But there is another argument: will a ban on plastic straws make any difference in the environment? In reality, the plastic straw ban will no doubt decrease the amount of plastic put into the ocean. True, it may not completely solve the problem, but it is a stepping stone to effectively protecting oceans and wildlife.
According to the U.S. National Park Service, Americans use a total of 500 million drinking straws a day, which is enough to wrap around the earth two and a half times. Only nine percent of this plastic material is recycled, with the rest ending up in landfills or the ocean. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the largest plastic mass area of 1.6 million square kilometers, is floating between Hawaii and California. This is a threat to the safety of marine life because the sea animals often mistake the microplastics for food.
Cities across the U.S., such as San Francisco and Seattle, have completely banned plastic bags, decreasing consumption by almost eighty-five percent. More cities in California, including Temple City, charge a fee for plastic bags. However, anyone can take part, in big or small roles. Bring a reusable bag when shopping with groceries. When getting a drink from your favorite boba place, use your own tumbler. Pack your lunch in glass containers. There are many other ways to avoid using plastic and in turn, preserve the environment.
Plastic pollution has been a widely known issue for decades, but thanks to major companies like Starbucks who have taken action, there is renewed hope for major change. It is necessary for not just a few companies, but for the whole world to limit plastic usage. This is the last straw to protect our oceans.