Twenty eighteen was the year of the plastic straw. News segments, think pieces, hot takes, and social media posts declared plastic straws public enemy number one. The story had everything: a kid on a mission against the corporate world, a gut-wrenching video of a sea turtle with a straw stuck in its nose, an easy-to-understand and ubiquitous problem. We also had a clear resolution requiring hardly any sacrifice: To save the environment, we just had to stop using plastic straws.
Cutting back or even banning single-use straws would certainly help keep them out of our oceans. But would it be enough?
“Wouldn’t that be nice,” says Erin Simon, WWF’s director of sustainability research and development, half laughing, half sighing. Simon is a materials scientist who has worked with some of the world’s biggest corporations to find planet-friendly packaging solutions. And as it turns out, the issue of plastic overrunning our environment is a bit more complicated than straws.
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