As far as I know, the city I live in (Columbus Ohio) isn't "The Litter Capitol of the World", and I don't think it even has a reputation for having any more litter than "normal". So if I was able to find this many straws littered on the ground in my city, I'm guessing that a lot of people could probably find this many in their city too.

When I first started this project, I wanted to do it to help bring attention to the fact that plastic straws are one of the most commonly littered items in the world. But while searching for 100,000 of them, I ended up noticing some things that gave me a unique perspective on the plastic straw problem that I want to share with everyone...


It is rarely "just a straw" that people throw on the ground. And come to think of it, I've never actually seen someone throw "just a straw" on the ground. (But I've definitely seen people throw plastic cups on the ground that have a straw in them.)

And for anyone who might be thinking that some of the cups in this picture are made of paper or foam and not plastic, the reason that paper cups don't leak is that they are coated with a layer of plastic, and the foam that foam cups are made of is a material known as "polystyrene" (which is a light and fluffy form of plastic) and therefore, none of the cups in this picture are "plastic-free".

And based on the types of of cups that I find with straws in them, rather than encouraging people to break their habit of using plastic straws by switching to an alternative (such as "paper straws") I would encourage people to get healthy and break their habit of eating fast-food and drinking caffeine, because that ultimately seems to be where almost all of the plastic straws I find littered on the ground are coming from.


Would you like "unnecessary paper" or "unnecessary plastic" with that "unnecessary straw" that you're not even going to use and are just going to throw on the ground?

Regardless of how you may personally feel about straws, I would hope that we can all agree that straws that don't even get used and that just end up as litter on the ground are completely unnecessary.


Please raise your children to be less wasteful. And even if you don't have children, you can still "adopt" a less wasteful lifestyle that could end up influencing others around you of all ages. (And that could result in you having a far more positive impact on the world than a negative one.)

STRAW-LIKE OBJECTS #1

STRAW-LIKE OBJECTS #2

STRAW-LIKE OBJECTS #3

After I stuffed the 100,000 plastic straws into "straw bales", I was about to sweep up and throw away all of the dirt and little pieces of plastic that were left over. But then it occurred to me that people need to see this.



If you throw a plastic straw on the ground, and nobody comes along and picks it up, it will eventually go from being a single piece of plastic that is fairly easy to see and pick up, to being countless pieces of microplastic that are virtually impossible to see or pick up.

"Microplastics" are the smallest type of litter, but if we don't start taking it more seriously, it will slowly creep up on us and become one of our biggest threats in the future.

---

HOME