Up Your Nose

From the loftiness of the White House, President Donald Trump took time from disassembling the federal government to issue an executive order stating that it is now the "policy of the United States to end the use of paper straws." He wrote, "An irrational campaign against plastic straws has resulted in major cities, States, and businesses banning the use or automatic inclusion of plastic straws with beverages. Plastic straws are often replaced by paper straws, which are nonfunctional [and] use chemicals that may carry risks to human health . . ."

One catalyst behind the "irrational campaign against plastic straws," a single-use plastic item, was the 2015 video in which marine biologists in Costa Rica removed a plastic straw from the nose of an olive ridley turtle. Another video shows researchers removing a plastic fork from an olive ridley's nose. Paper straws can decompose in 2-6 weeks, while plastic straws take up to 200 years, a bit beyond a turtle's lifetime.

That said, while plastic straws are destructive, environmentalists have moved past paper to even better solutions. Good Start Packaging makes straws from canola oil, which are biodegrade on land and in the ocean.

If you have the stomach for it, here are videos of scientists removing straws.

https://bit.ly/43vwERk
https://tinyurl.com/mrmr24mu