That Scary Fact You've Read About Plastic Straws Might Not Actually Be True
A lot of people have a lot to say about plastic straws right now, and there's truth in most of the information that's circulating.
Fact: Many plastic straws wind up in our oceans and harm or kill marine life and seabirds.
Fact: Plastic straws can take centuries to decompose - if they ever do.
?????: Americans go through 500 million plastic straws every day.
Media outlets, environmental organizations, and even government agencies have called that last line out as fact for years, even though it might not be the case. Americans go through an exorbitant number of plastic straws everyday, but that exact number didn't come from an official study or scientific research. It came from a nine-year-old.
According to Reason, a libertarian magazine, in 2011, then-9-year-old Milo Cress conducted an unofficial phone survey of three straw manufacturers. He asked for the estimates of the straw market, average their answers, and landed on this: Americans go through 500 million plastic straws every day. Apparently, the National Restaurant Association corroborated the statistic.
Cress used the number as part of his campaign for Be Straw Free, a homegrown project hosted by ecocycle.org, and it's since taken off. No one has officially debunked the number - but no one has officially proved it true, either. Estimating the amount of plastic straws used in the U.S. would be a huge undertaking.
Since 2011, the National Parks Service has taken the statistic (crediting Eco Cycle with the research). It appeared in the text of government bills, too, and The Sierra Club and The Lonely Whale Foundation have cited it. So have news outlets, including NBC, CNN, and National Geographic. We almost did, too - which goes to show how easy it is to assume facts you see online a true.
Avoiding plastic straws is a worthy cause - don't get us wrong, we're ALL for it - but do some research before automatically believing all the stats you read.
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