Beginning today over 32,000 facilities in Los Angeles, including food trucks and streetcar vendors, will ban plastic straws.
Sure straws are cool to drink out of and all, but do we really need them? Studies show that straws can take up to 300 years to decompose!
If the world doesn’t start tightening the reigns on the use of single-use plastic overall, it’s estimated that the ocean will contain more plastic than fish by the year 2025. Although plastic straws are a small part of the 8 billion metric tons of plastic which ends up in the ocean every year, enforcing a law to help to eliminate even a small contribution to ocean waste is a huge step towards changing the national conversation about plastic!
Restaurants can decide on what they wish to distribute to customers in lieu of plastic with alternatives like paper, metal, glass, and bamboo. As of right now, the ban only applies to businesses with more than 26 employees leaving all other businesses to make arrangements to comply with the law by October of this year.
The plastic straw ban was first introduced last year by L.A. councilmembers Mitch O’Farrell and Nury Martinez. That law passed in March with hopes to help reduce the city’s role in the estimated 500 million plastic straws used by Americans, everyday. The City Council voted 12 to 0 for the new rule this past Friday.