Rye straws in particular also left a residue in the beverage and a grass-like taste. Both wheat and rye straws became soggy very quickly, making them unpopular among the public. Marvin Chester Stone , an American inventor, developed the paper straw, proving to be much more sustainable and consumer-friendly than his predecessors. The straws were made by winding paraffin-coated paper around a pencil, gluing the paper together and removing the pencil.
He determined that the perfect straw length was 8. This meant Stone possessed the practical know-how and the business knowledge on how to manufacture paper straws in a large-scale operation. Stone filed the patent for paper straws in , and soon started to publish business-to-business adverts. The straws were marketed directly to companies, as it was an effective way to sell in bulk.
The robust Manila hemp plant was also used in the manufacturing of ship rigging and fishing nets! All first-class clubs, hotels, saloons, restaurants, etc, use my straws. And so the popularity of straws soared with businesses and consumers, alike.
By the early s, paper straws proved to be a hit. Paper straws allowed them to avoid making direct contact with the glass while drinking. At one point, Stone was producing two million paper straws a day in his factory.
Well, we say short-lived, but plastic straws pushed themselves into our everyday lives and stayed there for more than 60 years. This popularity put paper straws on the sidelines for a while.
Plastic straws seemingly appeared overnight, as the growth of fast-food restaurants created a sudden demand for disposable plastics such as drinking straws and cutlery.
Novelty straws also started cropping up — such as Crazy Straws, Magic Straws and Slurpee Straws, meaning plastic straw companies were targeting children and, naturally, this normalised plastic straws as opposed to paper straws. The biggest problem with plastic straws is that every plastic straw that has ever been produced is still somewhere on our planet. They are bad for the environment, harming sea life and contributing to the increasing levels of microplastics in our food chain.
Note: it is worth noting that flexible plastic straws are crucial for some hospital patients, as well as people living with certain debilitating conditions. Both durable and cheap, plastic was being churned out of factories at unprecedented rates during the second world war. When the conflict ended, American manufacturers needed a new consumer market. In her book Plastic: A Toxic Love Story , science writer Susan Freinkel describes a wartime plastic production infrastructure suddenly devoid of wartime plastic to produce.
Manufacturers turned their attention to a growing market for cheap consumer goods. No longer bogged down by wartime frugality, Americans wanted more and at lower costs. Straws were among the many throw-away products being rapidly manufactured by large corporations. Plastic straws quickly became cheaper to produce and more durable than paper. Throughout the s, the manufacturing infrastructure to mass produce plastic straws was put into place. New takes on the plastic straw, like jumbo straws and crazy straws, were produced in the s.
A number of large manufacturers met the demands of a society increasingly looking for convenient items that could be taken on-the-go. The world is now struggling to recover from its plastic pollution hangover. Corporations, municipalities, and even national governments are proposing and implementing bans on plastic straws. Some companies have jumped into the fray by manufacturing metal and glass straws that environmentally conscious consumers can buy for personal use, though they lack the disposability of paper and plastic from which restaurants benefit.
The same businesses that once benefitted from public excitement over plastic are increasingly feeling public pressure to use alternatives. Steve Russell is the vice president of plastics for the American Chemistry Council ACC , a trade organization that represents plastics manufacturers, among other industries. He says regulation that focuses just on straws, or any one specific product, misses the point.
Environmental groups, however, say plastic straw bans are an important step toward their ultimate goal: ending the circulation of single-use plastic. Rhodes believes that plastic straws will one day be an anomaly. When Aardvark Straws was created in , he says it was in part because of a demand from zoos, aquariums, and cruise ships that wanted to promote an eco-friendly image to their customers.
Learn more about what National Geographic is doing to reduce single-use plastic. All rights reserved. On January 1, , a ban on plastic straws in restaurants and other service businesses began in Washington, D.
Read on for the reasons behind such bans, and how we got here. This article was created in partnership with the National Geographic Society. National Geographic is committed to reducing plastics pollution. Learn more about our non-profit activities at natgeo. This story is part of Planet or Plastic? Learn what you can do to reduce your own single-use plastics , and take your pledge.
This story was originally published on July 6, and updated on January 2, For obvious safety reasons, the company opted to use plastic, not glass, when bringing these to market. Lipson, a math major at Vassar College, had a vision for a new straw experience, but no engineering background. In the weeks after he graduated in , he experimented in his parent's home with different ways to bend a plastic rod around a handmade jig to create the eyeglasses shape. He ultimately got it to work using a slow siphon of boiling water.
His straw glasses were a huge hit. But Lipson, who now owns the company, didn't stop. He estimates that he has filed over patents for drinking-straw designs over the past three decades. Not all of his straw-based ideas took off. The "mixinator," which involves a shot glass attached to the Krazy Straw, and a wine-aeration straw are among those that didn't suck in consumers.
Today, Lipson is most excited by the customized name straws his company offers. The biggest challenge are letters with points, like the letters "m," "w," and "i.
It's What's Inside That Counts Other straw innovators have focused not on the shape of the straw but what goes inside it. The Magic Straw , launched in , contains "flavor beads" that dissolve as liquid passes through, creating a chocolate, strawberry, or even banana-cream-flavored drink milk is the suggested liquid. It's actually a modern spin on one of the earlier novelty straws, the Flav-R Straw, which was sold in the s and contained a filter that flavored milk as it passed through.
So starting back in the s, somebody knew that if you could put flavor in a straw, kids would probably enjoy it. Next up, according to Henson, is a focus on making the straws more functional and appealing to parents, with the addition of things like multivitamins. But why change the liquid when you can change the straw? Reviews were unkind, and the products no longer appear to be available.
0コメント