A Bangkok-based restaurant chain has decided to replace ubiquitous plastic straws with an ecofriendly alternative.
A restaurant chain replaces plastic drinking straws with water spinach stems
Single-use plastic items can sure come in handy when we are out shopping or eating. Yet they’re a scourge on the environment by adding to the vast amounts of plastic waste produced globally each year. Take plastic straws. They may not seem like much of an environmental threat individually, yet collectively they amount to tons of waste in countries like Thailand, where they are handed out with every drink from restaurants to convenience stores.
But now a Bangkok-based restaurant chain specializing in organic food and vegan dishes has decided to change that. Broccoli Revolution has replaced ubiquitous plastic straws with the stems of Chinese water spinach. The hollow stems, which measure between 1cm and 1.5cm in diameter, can function as straws by allowing users to slurp their drinks through them.
Better yet: once you have finished drinking your beverage, you can simply proceed to eat your straw.
The restaurant chain buys Chinese water spinach every morning at local markets and sells the stem straw for 3 baht (9 cents) to customers. The restaurants also sell reusable straws made from bamboo.
Such simple solutions can make a long way towards weaning local customers off wasteful habits in countries like Thailand, which is one of the world’s worst per-capita plastic waste polluters. Recently, the country, which produces 2 million tons of plastic waste each year, made headlines after a pilot whale died in local waters after swallowing 80 pieces of plastic trash. An autopsy revealed that the sea-dwelling mammal had 8kg of plastic rubbish in its guts, which made it unable to eat and digest food properly.
The problem of plastic waste is especially acute in Southeast Asia where the planet’s five leading plastic polluters – China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam (in that order) – dump more plastic waste into the seas than the rest of the world combined. Each year some 8 million metric tons of plastic is dumped into the world’s oceans globally – which is enough discarded plastic to cover every coastline around the world.
