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United States Businesses

McDonald's To Test Plastic-Straw Alternatives in US Later This Year (usatoday.com) 270

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
Under pressure by environmentalists, McDonald's has announced that it will start testing alternatives to plastic straws at select locations in the U.S. later this year. From a report: The burger giant also announced that it will adopt more eco-friendly paper straws across all its 1,361 restaurants in the United Kingdom and Ireland, a region where the company started testing the alternative to plastic straws earlier this year. The regional rollout begins in September. Single-use straws are the scourge of the packaging-waste world because they don't easily biodegrade and aren't really necessary for most people when it comes to gulping a soft drink. The activist group SumOfUs estimates that every day, McDonald's alone dispenses millions of plastic straws that customers soon discard, leaving them to litter beaches or clog waterways and fill trash dumps.
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McDonald's To Test Plastic-Straw Alternatives in US Later This Year More

McDonald's To Test Plastic-Straw Alternatives in US Later This Year

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  • For those living in Louisiana ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by CaptainDork ( 3678879 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @09:16AM (#56809164)

    ... the new straws will be bayou-degradable.

  • Alternative? (Score:5, Informative)

    by mchall ( 4527517 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @09:20AM (#56809194)

    ... the company started testing the alternative to plastic straws earlier this year

    Some of us Slashdoters are old enough to remember a time before plastic straws. Yep, such a thing existed. Guess what we used, youngsters? That's right. Paper straws.

    So you might say that plastic straws are the alternative to paper straws, and not the other way around.

    • Dollar bills?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Teun ( 17872 )
      Hey youngster, we used...., guess what?


      Straw or reed straws!
      Yes, I know, hard to imagine.

    • Some of us Slashdoters are old enough to remember a time before plastic straws. Yep, such a thing existed.

      Yup, rolled up dollar bills worked just fine.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by arth1 ( 260657 )

      Some of us Slashdoters are old enough to remember a time before plastic straws. Yep, such a thing existed. Guess what we used, youngsters? That's right. Paper straws.

      Actually, for things like soda, you did not get straws unless you asked for them. I know, drinking from the rim of a cup without sloshing soda and ice cubes all over yourself, what an amazing dexterity people had back then!
      On the flip side, you did get ketchup for your McD fries back in the old days, and now you don't unless you ask.

  • What a ridiculous premise. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @09:31AM (#56809256)

    Plastic straws? Taking up measurable landfill space? Contamination the oceans??

    Most of the plastic in the oceans comes from a handful of Rivers in Asia. My guess is that it is manufacturing waste.

    This is not a hard problem to solve, and it doesn't take stupid BS efforts like making a different kind of straw.

    1. Implement, and actualize, heavy and escalating fines for littering.
    2. Start negotiating a treaty that limits plastic discharge to oceans, similar to the existing open water treaties regarding contamination, with a comprehensive monitoring regime. Nations that fail to meet compliance goals should be fined and/or sanctioned.

    Plastic straws take up a negligble amount of landfill space. If you want to reduce landfill usage, you need to start with the items that take up significant amount of space.

    And if you want to reduce plastic contamination of the environment, you need to ban and monitor plastic emissions into the environment. Not shopping bags and straws in the first world only, but a global monitoring regime on ocean and sea discharge waterways with standardized sampling and metrics. Believe it or not, this would probably be cheaper than the faith-based remedies of reusable shopping bags and paper straws.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Teun ( 17872 )
      I partially agree, the problem isn't the plastic straws, it is the lack of collection and recycling.

      • Re:What a ridiculous premise. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @10:50AM (#56809898)

        I partially agree, the problem isn't the plastic straws, it is the lack of collection and recycling .

        An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The problem isn't plastic straws, the problem is plastic. Straws are just a really frigging easy place to start dealing with the problem.

        • Agreed. For such an easy-to-replace item, plastic straws make up a surprising amount of the plastic that becomes pollution. There are already plenty of solutions possible: waxed paper, biodegradable plastics, etc. One problem with a biodegradable plastic bottle is that it might biodegrade before you really want it to - but a biodegradable straw does not have this problem. It won't be needed for more than a few hours from the time it is deployed. Straws are a really easy place to start with an impact that i

        • Yep. Even if they get rid of the straw there's still the plastic lid, etc.

          Do civilized people sitting at tables really need straws and lids? Can't they just drink normally?

    • Its the anti-straw lobby at it again. Funded by the gulpers no doubt. Kind of hypocritical if you think about the mass consumption habits of gulpers.

    • The US "only" uses 500 million straws per DAY.

      And straws pose certain threats to animal life than other shaped plastics.

      Here's more info:
      https://news.nationalgeographi... [nationalgeographic.com]

  • Price them out... (Score:3)

    by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @09:39AM (#56809308)

    Charge $5 for the cup, don't charge for the soda, or charge a nominal amount. People will start bringing their own reusable cups or bottles very quickly.

    Or (assuming they're not doing away with lids), design the lids like takeaway coffee lids -- tear out a portion to have a small "hole" for drinking.

    • Charge $5 for the cup, don't charge for the soda, or charge a nominal amount. People will start bringing their own reusable cups or bottles very quickly.

      Yes, just as you will go out of business very quickly giving free drinks away to those who bring their own cups.

      • Most people come to eat, not just drink. Raise the price of a "meal" by a few % to compensate for the cost of the soda-water.

  • Yet another control-freak ruse (Score:5, Funny)

    by RogueWarrior65 ( 678876 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @09:41AM (#56809328)

    It's pretty obvious that this is coming from the group of people who are hell-bent on restricting people's freedom of movement. How are people supposed to be able to move freely about the country if they can't eat and drink while driving?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Among the alternatives offered are paper straws. Remember when milk came in paper cartons too?

      • I'm old enough to remember a) when straws were paper and b) when milk came not only in glass bottles but was delivered by a milk truck from the local dairy. I'll see your bullsh*t weekly famer's market with all the gourds and beeswax you want and raise you not one but three full-time farm markets with permanent structures, their own bakeries, and their own butcher shops.

        Also, paper straws sucked...or didn't as the case may be. Pfft.

  • Thoughts from a diver (Score:5, Interesting)

    by junk ( 33527 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @09:58AM (#56809448)

    I'm not an activist about almost anything (privacy, I'm looking at you!) but this is a thing I can get behind. I've been on dives and collected trash. I do a dive every year specifically to collect trash. The ocean is a pretty amazing place and the amount of litter in certain places is depressing (not hyperbole). I picked up a variety pack of silicone and metal straws and we keep those in the car. I get weird looks and have to explain it a couple times that I don't want a straw but it's not really a big deal. If I'm seated at a place, I use my mouth hole.

    Paper is great and biodegrades. Washing is simple too though. It's not like anyone proposing taking something away without an alternative (like bags). We can do a pretty good job with recycling paper products too, so we don't even have to slash a bunch of forests to get there. All in all, this should be a non story.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by JD-1027 ( 726234 )
      I have a question on this. Do we think the straws that end up in the oceans/lakes are from people that throw them away appropriately? Or are they from people that throw things away on the street?

      For example, do you need to "carry your own straw" or "not use a straw" in a restaurant as long as you make sure to throw it away in the trash can?

      If I put my straw in a trash can at McDonald's, what are the chances it will end up in a lake? Instead of in the landfill along with it's cup I put in the McDonald's

      • Plastic is long-lived pollution, even and especially in landfills. Replacing plastic straws with a biodegradable alternative is a clear win. The personal responsibility angle is a red herring.

        So I attended and volunteered at a Father's Day pancake breakfast for a local charity this weekend. Emptying the trash got me thinking about how it could be done better. I wanted the food scraps for my compost pile. (We have a 1500 square-foot garden.) We might get some folk to separate the plastic cups and utensils

        • FYI, most "compostable" plastic cups and utensils are made from polylactic acid (derived from corn starch) and are NOT compostable in an ordinary home compost pile. They will just sit there pretty much like ordinary plastic would. They require a high temperature industrial composter which has extensive control over turnover, temperature, and moisture level. http://www.worldcentric.org/bi... [worldcentric.org]

  • Back in my day we used Papyrus, and WE Liked It!

    You have no idea how hard it is to suck an Asp through a Papyrus Straw!

  • Where I live, it seems everyone has one of those 30oz RTIC / Yeti / Ozark cups within 6 inches of them at all times with a hard plastic self-retaining straw. Many gas stations give you a small discount for filling one of those rather than using one of their cup and straw combos. Fast food places should follow suit.

  • Olden days (Score:5, Informative)

    by saltydogdesign ( 811417 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @10:01AM (#56809500)

    When I was a young whippersnapper, we would drink drinks by pressing the rim of the glass to our lips and tipping it up at an angle calculated to bring the liquid just in contact with the aforementioned lips, between which we would then slurp the aforementioned liquid.

    I know it sounds crazy, but it's true.

    • Re:Olden days (Score:4, Funny)

      by JonnyCalcutta ( 524825 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @10:44AM (#56809862)

      Citation, or it didn't happen.

    • Drinking straight from the cup became a nuisance once they began putting ice into drinks (so around the 1940s, when electric freezers became commonplace). Not only would the ice chill your lips, but sometimes it would spill out all over you. The straw solved these problems. The straw combined with the lid also allowed you to drink inside a moving car without spilling anything.
  • Hope the new ones can be popped like the old ones.

  • Paper? Why?? (Score:3)

    by magarity ( 164372 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @11:43AM (#56810220)

    Paper straws are horrible after they get wet.

    I get "plastic" cups that are really made out of some kind of corn fiber. They work great even after several refills. Why can't straws be made of the same material?

    • there are wax coated ones that don't do that

      yes I was there in 60s and early 70s with the horrible paper straws

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by King_TJ ( 85913 )

      This is what I was going to suggest. We had a regional burrito chain here called Boloco that used the clear plastic soda cups and lids and straws all made from corn fiber. You couldn't tell they weren't your standard plastic either. I found it kind of amazing.

      Never saw any other places offer those since then, so maybe they're real costly or something? Beats me. Boloco did close their doors at both locations near me, so they had SOME kind of financial issues.

  • I use a titanium straw, use a cotton tipped applicator to clean it. Amazon has many metal straws for sale.

  • So far, I haven't seen what the alternatives being considered actually are. McDonalds seems to be relying on 'straw on request' rather than replacing the plastic straw with something else. How about straw straws?

  • MacDonalds: Hey! We've found a replacement for our plastic straws! they're just as good as the plastic straws and biodegradable.
    Reality: new straw is crappy, doesn't work well, and stops functioning after ten minutes.

    Moral: never trust any product being sold on it's moral value. It doesn't have to hold up in quality, it just has to make people think they're saving the planet/eliminating hunger/ bettering humanity.

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