People often talk about swapping out plastic straws for other materials to help the ocean/fish and the environment, but they also complain about paper straws falling apart easily. Other alternatives that are slightly more sturdy like straws made of straw don’t seem very common.
But do we even need straws? My first reaction was that any liquid can be drunk directly from the vessel it’s in, and straws just add another level of convenience. If we don’t want to use plastic straws and the alternatives mostly suck (actually all straws suck 🤓), why not just ditch straws entirely?
As a facial hair have’r straws are nice to not get my beard covered in wet. That being said I rarely use straws.
There are likely some folks with disabilities that make drinking without a straw difficult but probably most of us don’t really need them.
We could also think about redesigning glasses or something if that would help.
Off-topic, but the fact that the replies aren’t scores of variations of “just hold the vessel to your lips like we do in the civilized world” makes me glad I switched from Reddit to Lemmy.
I’d like to have a metal collapsible straw that I can take with me anywhere and wash after a few uses. The metal it’s made of has to be odorless and flavorless too, because you don’t wanna feel like you’re drinking blood, don’t you?
A stainless steel straw works well for this. I’d recommend against collapsibility though. It really complicated things. Maybe just make it alightly shorter than normal.
They work well in moving vehicles but beyond that we could ditch them entirely. Edit. I should have said for most purposes. They do work well for kids or someone injured, hospitals etc.
Straws are a strawman argument to begin. That plastic drink cup has about 50 times the plastic of your typical straw.
I like a lot of ice in my drinks so I definitely prefer a straw. I’d rather replace the big plastic cup the drink is in…
