Most people have heard of a reusable or metal straw. But did you know that they aren’t just a “trend”. They also aren’t leaving the picture anytime soon. California has actually banned servers giving you a straw unless you ask for one, in hopes to reduce the use of them. Fast food restaurants do not apply to this ban, which is arguably the biggest user of straws. Seattle has also followed this ban and eliminated plastic utensils.

This past weekend I was talking with my co-workers saying my blog is due Tuesday and I didn’t know what to write about, that is when my co-worker, Carla, suggested the topic single-use plastics and it really got me thinking since I work at Bdubs, how many straws do we ACTUALLY use? Is this this a REAL problem? I decided I was going to save used straws and take pictures of them at the end of the night to see how many we really use. The first picture was after two hours at night time from about 8pm to 10pm on a Sunday night. The second picture is from 4-9pm on a Monday night, granted we were really slow due to weather.

Now this does not look like many straws but this was just a slow night. On busy nights we go through WAY more and to me that is just crazy how many straws one restaurant can go through. This really opened up my eyes and made me really want to stay committed to using re-usable straws and cups instead of single use to try and reduce my carbon footprint.