Senators' captan Erik Karlsson has done it. So has Hollywood actor Adrian Grenier.
They've stopped sucking and have joined a world-wide movement encouraging others to do the same. We're not talking performance on the ice or the stage. This is all about sucking straws and a campaign to get people to give them up for the environment.
There's nothing like a nice thick milkshake from Zak's diner and a big fat straw to suck it all up.
“I like drinking out of straws,” says one woman, as she sips on a strawberry milkshake, “and definitely with a milkshake, yeah.”
But there's an interesting campaign underway targeting our dependency on the lowly plastic straw. Americans use 500 million of them every day and all that plastic is bleeding into our oceans. The straw that broke the, well, turtle's back in this case was some grisly footage of biologists trying to get a straw out of a squirming sea turtle's nose.
And the #STOP SUCKING campaign was born urging people to go strawless, with even Sens’ Captain Erik Karlsson on board.
“I really don’t want to suck anymore,” he says in his Instagram post, “especially with the beautiful world we have around us.”
At the Wild Oat on Bank Street, they're using straws made of a corn product that biodegrades.
“I think it's the better choice based on where our climate is at these days,” says Amanda Watkins at the Wild Oat, “If we can alleviate some part of the waste and compost what we can, we should.”
Customer Donna Goodkey agrees, as she slurps up a smoothie using the compostable straw, “I'm all about stainless steel or glass, nothing that's plastic to help the environment.”
The Ottawa Riverkeeper is part of study underway analyzing microplastics pollution in the Ottawa River and says the news isn't good. The anti-straw movement is a small start.
“Lots of people will ask how am I going to help by not using a straw?” says Ottawa Riverkeeper Meredith Brown, “It gets people thinking about plastic and plastic pollution and what you can do individually and really, we do need to go on a plastic diet.”
And folks like Peter Harmsworth are anxious to embrace that.
“There’s got to be another alternative,” Harmsworth says, “something biodegradable or reusable and that would solve the problem.”
And indeed there is. Kitchen stores like Ma Cuisine on Dalhousie sell paper straws but also stainless steel straws that will last a lifetime. The only drawback is that they cost about $4 a piece.
