With just about everyone in food services and food distribution tripping over themselves about plastic straws, which they should have done ages ago, there now comes a new problem to affect individual rights. Those are the rights of incapacitated individuals who actually NEED straws to drink liquids.
Personally, I’ve said since the late 1970s that plastics would kill us! Maybe that was a little dramatic for back then, but what science tells us now about plastics being endocrine disruptors [1] is not off the mark.
So what do people do who need straws.
Well, the other day, while shopping at my local co-op of which I am a proud member, I saw a pack of four stainless steel straws with brush cleaner, which sold for $4.99.
What a great gift idea, I thought, the next time one needs a gift for someone.
However, there is an online website where several brands of stainless steel straws are listed, which consumers may be interested in researching.
However, I hope non-plastic, paper straws will be mainstreamed again, just like the ones we had when I was a kid. Those paper straws worked fine, but did not pollute you, the drink nor the environment. Those types of straws can be used in restaurants, fast food joints, and everywhere straws are needed in food services, i.e., nursing homes, hospitals, etc., as that’s what was used before plastics overtook and contaminated people and the environment.
Some paper straws still are manufactured. Aardvark paper straws are 100% FDA food-grade approved, biodegradable and compostable.
Aardvark creates flexible, customizable, durable and biodegradable paper straws that decompose in just 45-90 days. [2]
Since we finally understand the problems with plastic straws, now let’s take on plastic food containers, Styrofoam food containers, and plastic food storage containers. Personally, I purchase food in glass containers then re-use those containers to store food in my refrigerator or dry beans, etc. in kitchen cabinets.
Let’s make food plastics passé!
References:
[1] https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/endocrine/index.cfm
[2] https://www.strawlessocean.org/aardvark-paper-straws/
Resource:
Proposed California law to limit plastic straw use passes Assembly, moves to state Senate
https://www.ocregister.com/2018/05/30/proposed-california-law-to-limit-plastic-straw-use-passes-assembly-moves-to-state-senate/
Catherine J Frompovich (website) is a retired natural nutritionist who earned advanced degrees in Nutrition and Holistic Health Sciences, Certification in Orthomolecular Theory and Practice plus Paralegal Studies. Her work has been published in national and airline magazines since the early 1980s. Catherine authored numerous books on health issues along with co-authoring papers and monographs with physicians, nurses, and holistic healthcare professionals. She has been a consumer healthcare researcher 35 years and counting.
Catherine’s latest book, published October 4, 2013, is Vaccination Voodoo, What YOU Don’t Know About Vaccines, available on Amazon.com.
Her 2012 book A Cancer Answer, Holistic BREAST Cancer Management, A Guide to Effective & Non-Toxic Treatments, is available on Amazon.com and as a Kindle eBook.
Two of Catherine’s more recent books on Amazon.com are Our Chemical Lives And The Hijacking Of Our DNA, A Probe Into What’s Probably Making Us Sick (2009) and Lord, How Can I Make It Through Grieving My Loss, An Inspirational Guide Through the Grieving Process (2008)
Catherine’s NEW book: Eat To Beat Disease, Foods Medicinal Qualities ©2016 Catherine J Frompovich is now available.
Image Credit: Pixabay
“Aardvark paper straws are 100% FDA food-grade approved..”
FDA approved.. Oh boy..
Thank God! There IS someone whose IQ is NOT chasing their hat size writing about this subject. The use of so much “disposable” packaging, and especially plastic packaging with its clearly proven health issues, certainly needs attention being called to it. With the use of plastics for disposables, there arises a two fold concern. One is the long term contamination of the environment which has been discussed a great deal. The other is the depletion, unnecessarily, of limited natural resources, specifically oil. Oil is the raw material for making plastic. Making disposable products of plastic is, quite simply, throwing oil away. The only real beneficiaries of doing this are the one tenth of one percent billionaire owners of the oil companies and plastic manufacturers and the executives of the plastic products manufacturers.
These people take the natural resources of the world, which really don’t belong to them; they really belong to all of us living on earth equally, and conspire with governments to share as little of these resources as possible with the people to sate their own greed. They pass the problems caused by their discarded waste onto generations yet unborn, (If the toxins in the products don’t accumulate to prevent them being born)
If people would only stop and think ( I know, after several generations of compulsory public schooling, thinking is almost a lost art) about it, the “throw away society” only serves the self perceived interest, the selfish interests, of the so called elites. Throw away living only works to eliminate the less skilled jobs that enabled those among the population who had lesser abilities to acquire skills to have useful and productive lives. For example, I am old enough to have seen glass milk bottles, when emptied, be rinsed out and placed were they could be returned to the dairy to be refilled and resold. There were people at the dairy who inspected, washed and sterilized, and place back on the filling and capping line, took them off and placed them in racks for delivery. When the throw away cartons came in, all of those people lost their jobs. They were replaced by machines. The only job left was for those having the skills to maintain and repair the machines, and that was usually just added to the workload of the person who did that for the filling apparatus. Oh, yes, it was less costly to get the milk on the delivery truck; but the price of milk to the consumer went where? UP!
how about planting trees first, A.S.A.P., in order to offset the lost trees to countless fires, and that, due to ACTIVE GEOENGINEERING. The straws are just a tiny needle at the very bottom of a huge haystack of environmental disaster. The tip of that disaster is CLIMATE GEOENGINEERING, which is not addressed enough…