Letter of the Week: Ask for a "By Request Only" Straw Policy
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This week I learned a lot about the pros and cons of straw bans. As pointed out in every other Week 6 post, there are plenty of pros to banning single-use plastic bags. However, there is one big con: some people with certain disabilities require straws. This is why most plastic straw bans are not actual bans, but "By Request Only" policies. Kathryn Kellog of Going Zero Waste has been writing about waste reduction for years. In fact, she authored "101 Ways to Go Zero Waste" which was the first book I read when I started noticing all of the garbage in my life. In it, she shares the following letter template, to be referenced when requesting that your favorite restaurant apply a single-use plastic straw ban. Read more →
5 Alternatives to Single-Use Plastic Straws
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There are plenty of alternatives to the single-use plastic straw. Here are the pros and cons of five different materials. Of course, if you have any bamboo handy, you could always make your own! Read more →
How to Make Bamboo Straws
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Bamboo is a common replacement for single-use plastic and with good reason. It takes little maintenance, grows quickly and at end of life, and it's 100% biodegradable. In this tutorial, I'll show you how to turn one bamboo stalk into a few reusable straws. Read more →
Plastic Straws
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Last January, my husband and I went to The Bahamas to complete our Scuba Certifications. One night, when we were out to eat, I requested a straw to stir my Piña Colada. The waiter informed me that as of a few days prior, plastic straws had been banned from the country. Read more →
Letter of the Week: Requesting a Plastic Bottle Ban
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This week, while researching single-use plastic water bottles, I got so overwhelmed by the magnitude of this global problem that I began to question the point of writing a single letter. I began to feel like it was a waste of time and wondered how one person could make much of a difference. Right when I started convincing myself to dismiss this whole "Letter of the Week" idea, I found an article about a recently voted-on water bottle ban in Falmouth, MA. On September 14, 2020, a Town Meeting banned the commercial sale of single-use plastic water bottles in Falmouth effective September 1, 2021. Every article I found references a petition started by one woman, Christine Kircun of Sidewinder Road in East Falmouth. Apparently, one person writing one letter can make a difference after all. Read more →