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!

Last Summer we took our family home to the UK for the first time in several years and my overwhelming impression was that everything is shit:

• Paper straws that fail within about 2 min of contacting a beverage
• Water bottles that aren't stiff enough to hold without the liquid geysering out of the top
• Same bottles that bend in half when you tilt them to pour water into a glass, resulting in water spewing all over the worktop/table/..
• That last fucking bastard paper cup they used for my filter coffee in Pret at the services, it started to disintegrate before i had chance to drink a drop - actually that could have been very dangerous

The straws are generally made from recycled paper. Not fresh trees.

I am baffled at people who can't use those attached bottle tops. Just move it to the furthest side of the bottle neck and press it back.

I have no views on straws as I do not order or drink things that need straws.

Get a reusable straw and take a box to decant into and stop your whinging.

So don't walk with your drink then. Whichever way you spin it, it's a first world problem.
And before you say it ..as much as I am aware that people with certain disabilities need to use straws, I have never seen them starting a thread about it.

And now they have paper coffee cup lids as well. Have you tried those yet?
Awful.

That's what I have in my bag, cutlery and a metal straw.

If cardboard bothers you that much take a Tupperware box with you.

We still get the plastic straws and I've started keeping them now as now I don't know for how long we will. So if I'm reusing them, that counts as helping the plant, no?

But just yesterday I was given a wooden spoon to eat a dessert with. (child had medical condition, she had to eat right away so being a good mother, I joined her with emergency cheese cake😊)

You cannot eat cheesecake with a wooden spoon. It's tastes just like the spoon looks.

So I'm going to start keeping emergency plastic cutlery as well now.

I agree. How on earth do you enjoy a milkshake or something thst uses those thick straws in paper mode?

(can you really not get them at all in UK or are the mcd/kfc etc just choosing to supply to paper ones?)

I would love to have plastic straws back for kids juice cartons. I don't feel comfortable with them having metal straws for the same reason I don't allow them to run around with toothbrushes in their mouths.

We have and use metal straws at home, We are extremely mindful of the waste we produced and how we can lower it. I wouldn't use a plastic straw if we didn't feel like we needed it.

But please, give us back our straws!

I've been in Cyprus for the last 10 days where i have enjoyed (then carefully disposed of) plastic straws. How I've missed them! It's one of the cleanest places I've been, no litter, and the turtles seem happy in their crystal clear water so I don't feel too guilty 😬. I clearly have some sensory issues as the idea of metal or silicone makes the hair on my skin stand on end and the paper ones make me gag a little when they go soggy. Drinking and iced drink is not easy without a straw (and you want ice when the temp is in the mid 40's)

You can get silicone ones

Well it's all something, otherwise why bother at all right

They’re not coming back sooo best do some research on the best alternative options.See below.
They take 100s of years to decompose and are hugely damaging to marine life.

www.independent.co.uk/extras/indybest/food-drink/best-reusable-straws-for-environment-hot-drinks-coffee-a8369031.html

For me it's the wooden sporks.

I don't want everything I eat to taste of pine!!!

Bring back plastic!

When you've got a soft drink or iced coffee full of ice you have a lid on it to stop the ice all bashing you in the face/falling out down your front when you tip it to drink it. And as you've got a lid you need a straw. Surely obvious?
Also juice cartons etc.

This

Wow, how did people manage to sip drinks behind plastic lids? I make G&Ts full of ice at home and don’t need a lid. My kids manage to drink ice filled drinks at home without lids. Bit intrigued as to why you’re being so battered by icy drinks.

And we wonder why the planet is burning.😳

Plastic packaging and single use items are going to be used less and less so you’re going to have to get used to it.

Amazes me how people ( without a disability or sensory issue) feel their preference for drinking bubble tea through a plastic straw is that important. Or in another post, their love of glitter. Or balloon memorials. It's indicative of the me first culture.

@ImpossibleTh1ng it doesn't take a genius to figure out how sipping from a small rigid glass would be different from drinking from a large collapsable one

Collapsible cups? Never been given one of those. Do they just crumple as you drink?

You think a flimsy paper cup gives the same rigidity as a glass?

No but I’ve not had the experience of one collapsing as I drink.

Have you tried tipping a large one, full of ice up to get drink from the bottom? I can assure you, they collapse a little then funnel the ice towards your face as the PP, who you were originally replying to with your poor comparison of gin in a glass, accurately described!

Buy a metal straw and use that?

Being one of those people who are much vilified on Mumsnet, an "older person", this is yet another time when I've asked myself "How did we ever manage?". All straws were paper straws when I was a child. We managed, though, to be honest they were only used either in treat situations like parties or a very rare CocaCola in a cafe, or for drinking morning milk at school (very much not a treat!). Since I've been an adult, on the very few occasions I've been served a drink with a straw, I just don't use it because I don't like drinking through a straw. It is possible. But if I did regularly buy something that needed a straw, I would make sure I carried a reusable one with me. I know you said this is a light hearted post, OP, but it doesn't seem to be being treated that way. It never ceases to amaze me how "light hearted " discussions incite so much ill feeling and anger on Mumsnet. And for the record, I cared for my mother through her decline (vascular dementia and other issues) and she used cups with special lids for drinking. She couldn't manage a straw even and preferred in any case, to be able to drink as and when she wanted rather than someone holding a cup to her mouth and telling her to have a sip.