The United States goes through over 500 million plastic straws every day, according to Eco-Cycle, a United States-based nonprofit recycling organization.
They get used for only a few minutes, but potentially last for hundreds of years in the ocean, and are among the top 10 pollutants collected during beach cleanups.
Plastic straws kill marine life and choke reefs and beaches, never decomposing completely, but instead breaking into bits of microplastics, which eventually enter the food chain.
And so the straw — ubiquitous in most restaurants, bars, cruise ships and luxury resorts — has become a prime example of how tourism can have a deeply negative effect on the environment.
Global momentum has built in recent months to ban plastic straws and replace them with biodegradable ones, in part thanks to numerous social media campaigns using hashtags like #StrawsSuck and #TheLastStraw.
In February, Queen Elizabeth II issued a rare royal decree banning plastic straws and bottles from all royal estates (and their cafes and gift shops) and pledged to reduce using other single-use plastics at all royal functions.
In Britain, the Queen’s announcement was just the beginning. Several British corporations — including Waitrose, London City Airport, McDonalds UK and Costa Coffee — banned plastic straws.
And in mid-April, Prime Minister Theresa May announced a Britain-wide ban on the sale of plastic straws, stirrers and cotton swabs, and called on the 52 Commonwealth nations to implement similar measures.
Elsewhere, cruise companies like P & O, Cunard and Royal Caribbean have announced limits on plastic straws, bottles and packaging aboard its ships, while Carnival will stop placing straws in glasses automatically, but won’t outright ban them.
Airlines have been sluggish to enact change, but, Fiji Airways and Thai Airways both pledged to significantly reduce single-use plastic onboard their fleets in 2018, while Ryanair aims to be “plastic free” by 2023.
Many independent hotels have had plastic bans in effect for years, but big chains are only recently catching up. Anantara Hotels will remove straws from its properties by the end of 2018. So will Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, which, in April, announced a ban on plastic straws from all 110 of their properties.
Plastic straws campaign Source: Getty
India-based Taj Hotels will phase out straws from in-room dining at all 98 of their hotels, while AccorHotels will prohibit plastic straws in its 83 North and Central American properties by July.
Marriott, the world’s largest hotel company, is making the most substantial changes across several of their hotel brands, including a straw ban at all 60 British properties; Marriott’s 11 upmarket Edition Hotels will eliminate single-use plastics by 2019, a move made in collaboration with Lonely Whale, an environmental organization.
Marriott will also phase out mini-plastic shampoo bottles from 1,500 of its North American hotels, including the brands Courtyard, Fairfield and Residence Inns, to be replaced by wall-mounted dispensers; Marriott’s changes are projected to eliminate 10.4 million plastic bottles, accounting for 113,000 pounds of plastic waste per year.
Spirit companies have joined the fight, stating that there’s no place for plastics in cocktails. Bacardi launched its No Straw campaign in 2016, estimated to eliminate one million straws a year. This year Diageo and Pernod Ricard, owners of Absolut, Baileys and Smirnoff brands, banned straws and stirrers from global affiliates, functions and ads.
While this all adds up to progress for conservationists, the big question is why is so much of the travel sector resistant to change?
Many big luxury hotel brands, airlines and cruise ship companies — notorious for their oceanic waste and high carbon footprints — remain slow to curb unnecessary single-use plastics like bottles, slipper wrappers and plastic swabs that end up in the very oceans and beaches their guests travel across the world to experience.
“It’s surprising that the travel industry doesn’t show more leadership in terms of sustainable practices,” said Clark Mitchell, a former editor at Travel & Leisure and now a director at The Band Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to biodiversity conservation.
People go on a cruise to see beautiful islands, clear waters and gorgeous beaches. These companies have a direct stake in keeping these places pristine. And yet single-use plastic, like straws, are literally everywhere a traveler looks, in the drinks being sold, in the water and on the beach.
Sonu Shivdasani, the chief executive of Soneva Resorts, a small luxury hotel chain emphasizing sustainability that banned single-use plastics in 2008, echoed that sentiment.
"Hotels serve the richest 30 percent of the world’s population, and in doing so, consume far too many natural resources that weigh negatively, impacting the other 70 percent of society. We, as an industry, continue to consume far more than our fair share of resources."
For luxury travelers, another question lingers: Why do high-end resorts have single-use plastic in their rooms in the first place? “Travelers spending over $400 a night on a hotel room shouldn’t be drinking from a cheap plastic bottle,” Mr. Mitchell said. “Plastic is not luxury.”
While travel corporations and private entities are in the nascent stages of making these changes, governments are slowly coming around.
The European Union is rumored to follow Britain’s lead, while Australia also has a plastic ban in the works. In January, Taiwan announced the strictest regulation yet: a blanket ban forbidding all single-use plastic bags, straws and cups.
In the United States, both Hawaii and California have pending straw ban legislation, while Seattle — the birthplace of the Starbucks disposable, to-go coffee culture — passed a measure banning plastic straws and utensils that goes into effect in July.
