To just want plastic straws back!

[Malahide]

Lighthearted - mostly!

I’m so sick of paper straws turning to mush before a drink is even finished, they just aren’t fit for purpose. Add in the awful wooden cutlery that you now get (I want my salad to actually taste like salad, not wood!!) and the cardboard takeaway containers which begin to disintegrate as soon as they touch food and all of a sudden I’m reconsidering whether the planet is really worth saving…

I’m joking of course but surely I’m not the only one who feels this way? There have to be better alternatives out there than paper, wood & cardboard that just seem to ruin everything!

And they coat the cardboard with something that means you can’t recycle it either!

I don’t know why British is so obsessed with straws. When I was in NZ, admittedly some 20 years ago, we just get either a bottle, a can or a glass. Why do you need a straw? What’s wrong with drinking directly from the can or glass?

I’m a nurse with the elderly and they’re absoloutely awful for them! We used to still be able to get plastic for the elderly and disabled but no longer can. It’s frustrating for them and we’re already battling trying to get fluids into those with dementia and the like that have poor fluid intake

I can’t drink really cold drinks through metal straws, really sets my teeth on edge!

Off topic I know, but I don’t get the obsession with takeaway coffees and coffees in caffs. My DH is always buying them, especially annoying when we have to leave early to catch a train, say, and he ‘just has time to grab a coffee’. But I realise I am in the minority here.

but I do dislike paper straws. I have a couple of metal ones at home.

I keep silicon straws in my bag at all times. They’re brilliant.

Hate hate hate wooden cutlery. Cannot abide the texture. I keep a metal knife, fork and spoon at work. I used to carry a pair of chopsticks in my handbag to eat things like takeaway salads. Much easier than using a crap disposable fork. I got a very cheap and enormous pack of plastic straws from a pound shop years ago and we are still slowly working through them.

If you're that bothered, carry metal straws if you know you'll be having drinks?

I think you might be confusing micro plastics pollution and global climate change. One has little impact on the other, no neither are desirable.

Could you do this with paper straws though?

https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/most-straws-stuffed-in-the-mouth-(with-hands)

YANBU. I was nearly reduced to tears by a Capri Sun today.

Fishing nets are a far far bigger issue to plastic pollution/our oceans than a few plastic straws. We need to tackle the big issues like industrial fishing, not put a little plaster over the problem like paper straws.

We now have metal straws, because I much prefer drinking through a straw, even my hot drinks, but occasionally if I buy my children a drink carton, those straws break before they even pierce the foil. Useless.

Could you get glass straws ? They come in a little case that you can carry in your handbag. Reusable and not paper.

Metal straws are so incredibly dangerous to use with children

It's better for our teeth to drink through a straw.

As much as I dislike wooden cutlery, I love those little chip forks.

I hate paper straws!
But, with the kids' Scout group we used to go and clean up rubbish from shorelines and mangroves, and the number one thing we'd pick up was plastic straws. Thousands of them every time. And the older they were, the more brittle they were and they'd start cracking apart and leaving bits of plastic everywhere that we just couldn't pick up. All the while the shorebirds were picking around this rubbish. It was very sad, and very confronting. I'd never have plastic straws back.

What is the deal with the plastic bottle lids now attached to plastic bottles? I swear that up until recently, the instruction was to not put the lid in your recycling. I used to wash them out and give them to the school which recycled them. Never got the memo about screwing them back on the bottle and recycling the whole thing. If they just let people know, I am sure they wouldn't need to attach them.

I think they are designed to put us off buying plastic bottles completely! Bloody awful design.

Watch out for those metal straws...I read about a woman who died because she tripped while carrying a cup with a metal straw, fell onto the cup, and it pierced her eye. Bl*dy hll. Apart from the danger aspect, you also have to faff about with little brushes to clean metal (and possibly silicone) straws, or so I'm told.

I hate soggy straws. A small restaurant we went to today actually had thick cardboard straws that didn't disintegrate. All the others are garbage.

Bubble tea places still do plastic straws. How are they getting away with it? Bubble tea through a paper straw would be awful.

I too miss plastic straws! I prefer paper wrappers though (on chocolate and such like) to plastic wrappers.

Bubble tea is awful through any straw. Like drinking frog spawn

Yes my Ds used to like them simply unusable now