Made in 10minutes – Used for 20minutes – Polluting the Planet Forever!
Plastic Straws have now established themselves in the top 10 most common plastic items found during beach cleanups in the world, and here, on this tiny Island Archipelago called Malta, it is no different.
All the plastic straws which were ever made since 1950, when they started being mass produced, are still present on earth. They roam around in our seas an oceans, very often mistaken for deadly food, by mammals, birds and fish.
Finally, we started to comprehend the extent of the damage that this small, seemingly innocuous piece of plastic has on the planet. Unfortunately, only when we started realising the direct effect on human beings, that things started to gain momentum to stop this pollutant. We now know for sure, that most of the fish which is consumed by humans contains microplastic, meaning that the plastic straw which was used to drink from has entered the food chain and gone a full circle by ending up in our hands ( or in this case, stomach) again.
A lot of statistics can be found on the internet regarding plastic straws. Yet, we wanted to find out the extent of the local issue by finding out how much straws are consumed in the Maltese Islands.
All the results you will see which concern the Maltese Islands were all meticulously calculated by our team using some statistical data provided by the National Statistics Office of Malta (NSO), the Tourism Authority and a big chunk of data collected by us through surveys and observations. Statistics regarding European and global consumption were collected from International Environment Organisations.
These are some of the findings!
- At least 37 million straws are used per year by the Hospitality Industry only! That’s 102,000 plastic straws per day!
- Put end to end, one year’s worth of plastic straws consumed in Malta would stretch from Malta to New York
- 5 years worth of plastic straws consumed in Malta would be enough to go round the Earth’s circumference! It would weigh 185 tonnes, which is equal to the weight of 5x A320 aeroplanes
With a small conscious change, we have the power to cause such a positive impact on the environment. If we give up the straw or choose a paper or bamboo one, we would be guaranteeing that not another straw ends up in the environment or in some poor animal’s stomach. Rebels With A Cause offers compostable paper straws in packs of 50, contained in fully compostable kraft paper package and also a cool bamboo straws pack of 6bamboo straws plus one cleaning brush!
Visit our SHOP to find out more!
Watch out for updates in our blog, as we shall discuss the various alternatives we offer to plastic straws and why we believe that our paper and bamboo straws are the best!