The war on single-use plastics poses a trying question for restaurant owners: Continue offering plastic straws, switch to a version made from alternative materials, or ban the staple completely?
As owner of The Bitter Alibi, The Fix Lounge and The Daily Ration, it's a debate with which Jason Bowers is well acquainted.
"I personally don't use a lot of single-use plastics at home, so I don't think my restaurants should either," he says.
In 2018, Bowers eliminated plastic straws from his restaurants and began supplying alternative straws only for cocktails, mostly at The Bitter Alibi in drinks with salted rims, or for those who specifically ask for a straw.
"Often, people are fine drinking directly from a cup," he says.
Upon making the switch, he started with paper straws made of hay but found those deteriorate quickly, sometimes ruining the experience of a craft cocktail. His restaurants now serve straws made of avocado pit, which have been more of a success, he says.
"We are really working on finding alternatives to cut down on the amount of waste that we accumulate on a daily basis," says Bowers.
A 2018 Stanford University study estimates there are 150 million metric tons of plastic floating in the ocean, with 8 million tons added each year. Plastic straws make up less than 1% of the debris, but internationally, they were the third-most-common piece of trash picked up on beaches in 2018 by the volunteer marine conservation group Ocean Conservancy.
Straws have become a touchstone of humans' excess and related environmental impacts. It is estimated that Americans use between 170 million and 390 million straws per day.
The Plastic Pollution Coalition's Last Plastic Straw project encourages customers to add "no straw, please" when ordering drinks, and some places have removed the option altogether.
In 2019, following Seattle's 2018 citywide ban on plastic straws and utensils, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., also banned plastic straws in the service industry, while the state of California enacted legislation that they only be served to those who ask for them. Starbucks hopes to fully eliminate plastic straws from all its cafes by 2020, and several major airlines have switched to alternative versions.
Bowers is conscious, however, of those who may require straws due to disabilities, as alternative materials may be more difficult to suck liquids through.
The caveats don't end there, he says. When he was purchasing plastic straws in bulk, Bowers was paying about $20 for 1,000. Now, he's paying about $60 for 1,000 avocado pit straws - which he orders from Amazon. There is still waste in bulky packaging, along with the carbon footprint of shipping.
"Until a larger amount of restaurants invest in local paper companies, then it won't be cost-effective," Bowers says.