Disposing of plastic straws.

Check with your local council, some will recycle these.

I’ve banned cotton buds in our house for the same reason.

Keep them in the loft, one day you can take them to Antiques Roadshow and explain to those who have never seen them just how environmentally unfriendly we all were.
I doubt they will be worth very much, but they will still look as good as new!

Seriously, I’m probably going to put mine in the garden bonfire and pollute the atmosphere instead of the seas.

Ok, thicko alert coming. If the plastic straws are thrown in the kitchen bin the contents of which gets taken away by the bin men surely they would end up in landfill? How do so many make their way to the sea? Ditto loads of other plastic stuff. (You have reminded me I need to order more paper straws!)

Delighted to see that McDonalds have removed all of theirs.

I agree Alimo they end up in landfill.

I’ve got some too.
Could we weave them into something?

youtu.be/cXlQ9V4DNYo

Sorted.
I’ll do the wreath at Christmas ??

I have paper straws now but if you still have plastic ones left over, you may as well use them and put them in the household rubbish which goes to landfill.

My reasoning is that the plastic straw already exists and so by not using it at all, that's even more wasteful.

Greenpeace say that the plastics are so light that they often get into rivers and then into the sea. I don’t know why they can’t be turned into plastic beads and just reused.

But I expect that someone can and will.

Plastic straws and made from polypropylene - a by product of petroleum so they will burn. Technically straws are recyclable but size is a problem. Put in a bag of other plastics for recycling and sent down a sorting conveyer, small things like bottle caps and straws fall through the cracks and end up in landfill. The plastic straws polluting the oceans come mainly from littering.

Why not be creative with them? Lots on idea on Pinterest and You Tube.

I can imagine the day when those of us with a garden could be burying some of our non-recyclable rubbish. Why not bury plastic straws and cotton buds? The council landfills will soon be full up.
It upsets me that shops continue to automatically offer you a plastic bag for the smallest thing.
I was often surprised at what we dug up in our french garden. One day I was digging in the veg plot and found something huge - a baby's carrycot filled with quilts and other bedding.
Another time a cylinder vacuum cleaner. Loads of other stuff.

A poster made a good point on here some weeks back about plastic - she said that in her area it is burned to produce energy for heating, and that it is the wrongly discarded plastic that is doing the damage. I believe cruise ships are offenders as they jettison all sorts of disposable entertaining stuff into the sea.

They will burn. Maybe recycle. Anyway, use them first. Doubly wasteful not to.

Some of the ideas are fabulous. The GCs only use about 20 a year, so I don't have a big problem...

This has been bothering me too. We have quite a lot for when GC visit but they don't want them so often these days.

The plastic which ends up in the sea is not from the UK or developed countries (although it is shameful that it ends up in landfill). The plastic in the sea is from areas where there is no civic refuse disposal system. DD2 spent 6 months touring East Asia last year (working) and was appalled by the plastic waste, and by the locals just chucking it in water channels and the sea. She did speak to local people and ask why they were disposing of waste in that way, and the answers were along the lines of 'because there's nowhere else to put it. What do you do with yours?' So, apart from developing alternatives to plastic, perhaps we should be supporting other nations to develop refuse handling systems.

I think a lot of the plastic in the oceans gets there from India, and possibly other states. I've heard China are guilty too. I watched a news item about India, and how in many areas they have no rubbish collections, so people throw their rubbish into the rivers, the Ganges is very badly polluted because of this, and of course the rubbish is taken away at high tide and washed into the sea. The bit of film I saw showed all sorts of plastics, plastic bags and other things. Last year I was in Cambodia and I learnt from our tour guide that there are no rubbish collections there either, the rubbish was all piled up along the road. The biggest problem is that although we should, and I hope do, everything in our power to reduce pollution of the seas, and in fact all pollution, we have to recognise that many countries in the world cannot afford, or choose not to afford, any kind of rubbish collection, let alone recycling!
With regard to cruise ships, I have cruised on and seen with my own eyes, extremely good and efficient recycling, and rubbish collection. They do not throw rubbish into the sea, maybe they used to, I don't know, but they don't now.

Fennel: I too found mysterious items buried in a garden. DD had moved into a flat with fair sized garden. Having a go at tidying garden unearthed a double mattress and twin tub washing machine. Burn the straws after use if possible or into recycling bin.

Yes Nemosmum, that is precisely the problem. However many plastic straws we don't use, we can't solve the problem by using paper straws, the problem is far bigger than that. None the less, I won't be buying any more plastic straws, and my cotton buds are not made of plastic. I use canvas shopping bags etc etc. Whatever we can do, we should do, but we should realise that this won't save the planet, the problem is bigger than that.

Put them inside their carton, or a plastic recyclable bottle and put the lid back on it. You should also put lids back on plastic bottles as they are too small on their own - I wasn't aware of this until I read this Which report last week.

www.which.co.uk/news/2018/07/up-to-29-of-supermarket-packaging-is-not-recyclable-which-finds/ - Which?

Years ago I bought a pack of 250 plastic straws. The grandchildren like a straw in their drinks. We have a plastic recycling bin so i thought it was ok to put them there. I might as well use them because they exist so whether I use them or not, they still need to be recycled at some time.

Rosina, when we got off the ship in Brisbane, all rubbish, both liquid and solid was collected by tankers.
Admittedly Aus is a country that cares- unlike many others.
Maddyone I agree but it does make me feel better to do my bit. Anyone still using liquid soap. I’m working on the principle that every little helps??

At the moment few places can recycle straws because of their size and the types of plastics used. This leaves the 'solution' of landfill, where they can take hundreds of years to break down meanwhile removing land from any other use (housing, crops, recreation)
"Straws are among the most common plastic items found on UK beaches – they make up over 60 per cent of all the litter found there. Don’t let their ‘smallness’ mislead you, the effect they have on the environment is significant and lasting. Like all plastics, straws don’t fully break down. Instead they fragment into smaller and smaller pieces which cause environmental damage, endangering wildlife and entering our food chain.

When plastic straws are littered (rather than being disposed of in a bin), they enter waterways and oceans, and it’s here where they do their most damage. It is estimated that 8 million tonnes of waste end up in the world’s oceans each year. Much of this waste material is plastic which marine species often mistake for food as it fragments into bite sized pieces. Sky’s Ocean Rescue programme highlighted how a bowl of muscles can contain as much as 14 pieces of micro-plastic." Jo Gilroy (Head of Sustainability Bunzl Catering)

Pamela, as I said in my post, I'm doing my bit too.