The last straw

Drinking straws have been around in some shape or form for thousands of years. How long, exactly? Archeological evidence suggests that Sumerian kings and Egyptian pharaohs used gold straws to drink beer.

Common folk have also been using straws for ages, albeit a humbler variety. These were originally made with reeds, then with paper at the end of the 19th century and with plastic since the 1960s.

While the plastic straw has ruled the drinking straw world for over half a century now, it is slowly being dethroned by its more decomposable predecessor, the paper straw.

Let’s look at how Canadians were using plastic drinking straws before the pandemic.

When we asked in 2019, almost one-quarter (23%) of Canadian households told us they used at least one plastic drinking straw a week. Among these households, half said they used one or two plastic straws, 1 in 10 said they used three straws, and over one-third (38%) said they used four or more plastic straws in a given week.

Almost two-thirds (64%) of Canadian households said they never reused plastic drinking straws in 2019. One-quarter of those that used plastic drinking straws said they sometimes or often reused them, while 1 in 10 said they always recycled them.

While plastic drinking straws are slowly heading towards the scrap heap of history, you may still find the odd one lying in a ditch, washed up on a beach or floating down a river somewhere for the next 200 years or so, given that is how long it takes for them to decompose in the environment.

If you do see a plastic straw lying around, please join the tens of thousands of Canadian households who participate, without pay, in cleaning up shorelines, beaches, rivers, lakes or roadsides by picking it up.

Your efforts will move us a bit closer to a world without plastic straws.