If you prefer something a bit more glam, the bag also comes in a slightly different style with a gold, chain-link drawstring in place of the leather cord, which is sold on the same page. Softy Straws is a great silicon straw brand because it comes in a wide variety of sizes and colors. “It’s thin enough to fit through the slit in a hot coffee cup, flexible enough to fold up into any bag and carry around, and dishwasher-safe (although it also comes with a pipe cleaner to scrub out the insides),” she writes. They’re similar to a coffee or cocktail straw in that regard. Mersola said she supported the ban on single-use straws – “I saw that terrible video that went around with the straw in the turtle’s nose” – but it wasn’t a view always shared by the people she was serving. It wasn’t only the restaurant patrons in Open Sesame who balked at the new rules. Madison Mersola, who works as a server at the Open Sesame restaurant in the Belmont Shore neighborhood of Long Beach, said the early days of the new law were rocky, especially since the restaurant decided to eliminate straws, not just reserve them for people who asked for them.

That’s because more and more restaurants are trying to stop using plastic straws, and some cities are even banning them. Ever since California became the first state to bar full-service restaurants from automatically giving out single-use plastic straws, many Californians have felt its impact. While your groom’s mother might score a discounted rental fee for the rehearsal dinner venue (especially if the event is on a Thursday night), the open bar costs and dinner menu will be full-price, year-round. Kaleigh Laurino keeps an eye on her drink when she meets up with friends at a bar – not because she fears that someone might spike her cocktail, but because she doesn’t want her reusable stainless-steel straw cleared away yet again with the empty glasses. “My friends are like, are you serious? And make sure the lids are on good and tight. Straws probably make up a very, very small percentage of our trash worldwide.

But Laurino, who has long been serious about ditching single-use plastics – even before a restriction on their use became California law in January – now carries a small pouch with her that holds a reusable straw and small, bristled cleaning brush. And plastic in the ocean floats around as small pieces (called microplastics) that can poison animals and hurt the environment. It was a took the form and voice individual bags of veggie straws Mentor, and called Telemachus to come tree, and they marked the place by pulling up reeds and gathering daughter to King Alcinous. Right now we’re thinking about making some changes to the second floor so we can have more space in our bedroom but it took us a few years to come up with a solution that will probably create a much better space for us. “We do keep a few plastic straws in stock for the occasional gluten-free person,” Putterlik said. Putterlik discovered Hay! Straws, made from natural wheat stems. Putterlik says she stocks two sizes of the all-natural straws and – with the exception of a specific cocktail served in a highball glass – still provides them only upon request.

Weinreb loves these wide glass straws from women-owned company Simply Straws (which she says are especially great for sipping smoothies). James Garvey, vice president of sales for the Chicago-based Swzle, said his company is approaching the increasingly competitive marketplace with an eye on design. The company becomes the largest food and beverage company to do so as calls to cut waste globally grow louder. Definitely be sure to wash them before use as the instructions advise to cut back on that. While using reusable straws isn’t going to save the planet, it is a nice way to cut down on some of your plastic consumption, and definitely makes me feel classier and a bit better about my environmental impact. Pros: Like paper straws, wheat straws are a much better single-use straw option than their plastic counterparts because they break down naturally. “We learned very early that some people need a straw, and oftentimes the plastic straws, specifically, the bendy straw, is best for those who have mobility issues or difficulty grasping on to a paper or a metal straw,” Kane said.