Paper Straws are a Lie

Written by Lauren Brooks| Designed by Madison Kirkland and Caleb Chong

Over the past few years, there’s been an explosion in the sustainability movement. With climate change worsening, the state of the environment has risen to the forefront of politics, particularly those of Generation Z. It’s common to see people toting around reusable utensils, bags and especially metal straws.

Straws, especially, have been a point of contention in the fight for the environment, as videos of sea turtles getting plastic straws stuck on them went viral, tugging on the heartstrings of a worldwide audience. A 2018 bill successfully restricted California restaurants from giving out single-use straws without customer request. Many people applauded the implementation of this new law, considering it a vital step to a more wastefree world and to help the animals affected by plastic pollution. With this came the boom of metal straws, a portable, reusable alternative to plastic straws to “save the turtles!”

But of all plastic pollution, straws only account for approximately 0.025%, according to National Geographic in the article “A Brief History of How Paper Straws Took Over the World.”

Still, paper straws soon emerged as an alternative to plastic, especially in restaurant scenes. Is the marketing true? Are they a helpful, meaningful step toward protecting our environment?

Dr. Jacob Lanphere, professor of environmental science, says they may not be.

“Paper straws are something that have been introduced in our economy in the last five years, and they are still causing problems because they are still single-use materials,” Lanphere says. “A lot of (the) time these materials can end up floating in the wind, accumulating in other locations. Even though they are paper, they can still cause problems, such as land pollution.”

- Dr. Jacob Lanphere (professor of environmental science)

Lanphere also looked to the future.

“Some longterm effects of paper straws haven’t been investigated, such as health effects,” Lanphere says. “We’re ingesting these papers filled with chemicals in them (in) the human body.”

While an environmental standpoint is the easiest way to evaluate the pros and cons of the paper and metal straw boom, a less considered factor is the effect on the disabled population, who require the features offered by plastic straws to drink.

As a disabled woman, this oversight has always struck close to my heart. However, my disability in particular doesn’t affect my ability to drink. However, the kaleidoscopic lens of my disability allows me to see that we are at the bottom of the totem pole when considered for potential problems in normalized innovations of society — we are underrepresented almost everywhere.

Madison Lawson, 24-year-old disabled journalist whose work has appeared in Vogue, Teen Vogue, Allure, and Glamour, described her experiences with living after the quantity of accessible plastic straws began dwindling after California passed the 2018 bill. She lives with a rare form of muscular dystrophy called Ullrich Congenital Muscular Dystrophy (UCMD), an experience she wrote about in an oped for Teen Vogue called “Starbucks’ Elimination of Plastic Straws Is Bad for Disabled People.”

Lawson said that after the plastic straw ban, many people dismissed the disabled community’s concerns about not having access to plastic straws. Paper straws were offered as a viable alternative, but for hot beverages or prolonged use, they are simply not practical and do not work for everybody. Plastic straws also feature bendability, which can make drinking much easier for some of the population. Because she has limited head movement and weaker neck muscles, Lawson takes plastic straws along with her in her travels, as they become necessary for her to drink beverages when the drink level is low.

“People are so ready and hyped to jump on the woke train when it comes to that [plastic straw ban], to [say], ‘Oh! I love the environment!’ but they don’t prioritize disabled people’s needs,” Lawson says. “For some people a straw may be a simple luxury, or something they don’t need, but it’s not woke to take that option away from the people who do need it.”

However, according to Lawson, these misconceptions arise from the ignorance of abled people, and it is not meant as intentional harm to the disabled community. “I have to believe that it’s just ignorance, that it’s a complete lack of knowledge that causes people not to care,” Lawson says.

“I want to believe that if they did, they would think twice about taking away those materials.”

Restaurants can even be paid to actively combat their plastic-using habits. For example, the nonprofit Plastic Free Restaurants will subsidize the cost for a restaurant to convert to paper straws. This can be good for restaurants looking to conform to societal standards, but it fails to address the core problem of any present-time product — emissions. Whether plastic or paper, production systems account for a large amount of pollution.

“There was a lot of energy put into the system to create that paper straw, if we back up and look at the supply chain,” Lanphere says. “The trucks that drove the straws from the manufacturer are still creating air emissions. The manufacturing plant still had to use chemicals put into these materials. They are not the end-all, be-all to environmental issues.”

If paper straws are not a solution, Lawson said they should remain as a matter of personal choice. She suggested that people be allowed to adopt the mindset of sustainability if they please, but to keep plastic straws as an option for those who need them.

- Madison Lawson (freelance journalist)

“I think that it should be a personal choice — restaurants should keep plastic straws available for people. But if someone feels that strongly about them and doesn’t want to use it? That is a personal choice. We shouldn’t eliminate excess in the process of personal choice.”

Regardless, the issue of straws remains contentious, and we will probably deal with paper melting into our Cokes for a while longer.