‘I don’t think that plastic’s going to affect a shark very much as they’re eating — as they’re munching their way through the ocean,’ said Trump
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U.S. President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to “end the forced use of paper straws” and bring back plastic ones, the White House said Monday.
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“These things don’t work,” said Trump, while signing the document, referring to paper straws. “On occasion, they break. They explode. If something’s hot they don’t last very long, like a matter of minutes. Sometimes a matter of seconds. It’s a ridiculous situation so we’re going back to plastic straws.”
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He added: “I don’t think that plastic’s going to affect a shark very much as they’re eating — as they’re munching their way through the ocean.”
Per the White House’s fact sheet about the order, the U.S. federal government is being directed to stop buying paper straws and to make sure they are not provided in federal buildings. A national strategy to end the use of paper straws must also be developed within 45 days.
Last week, in a post on Truth Social, Trump said he would be ending “the ridiculous Biden push for paper straws, which don’t work.”
“Back to plastic!” he wrote.
The activism against plastic straws stemmed from a video taken by marine conservation biologist Christine Figgenerof in Costa Rica nearly 10 years ago. In the graphic video, a research team works to remove a bloodied straw lodged inside the turtle’s nostril. It has now been viewed more than 100 million times on YouTube.
The video sparked an anti-plastic-straw movement, as BBC News called it.
Actor and environmentalist Adrian Grenier also played a role in popularizing the idea of banning plastic straws as part of his foundation, The Lonely Whale. It ran a campaign, For A Strawless Ocean, that is still ongoing. Per the campaign, plastic straws “end up in the ocean, polluting the water and harming sea life.” The campaign asserts that by 2050, there will be more plastic in the ocean, by weight, than fish.
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Trump’s order is a major shift in policy since some states and individual cities have limited the use of or banned plastic straws years ago.
In 2018, California governor Jerry Brown signed a bill that only allowed customers to receive a straw upon request, CNBC reported. As of July 2021, Colorado prohibited stores and retail food establishments from providing single-use plastics, including straws, to customers at the point of sale, per a summary of the bill provided by the state’s general assembly.
Many states opted to restrict plastic straw use, similar to California, including Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, and more.
Several cities also took the matter into their own hands.
In California, the City of Santa Cruz opted to make food service businesses switch to “compostable straws such as those made of paper are acceptable,” the city said in a news release. San Francisco implemented a similar ban in 2019, per the San Francisco Environment Department.
In Florida, cities like Fort Myers Beach, in 2017, and Miami Beach, in 2019, also imposed plastic straw bans.
The number of straws used by Americans everyday is estimated to be between 390 million, per advocacy group Turtle Island Restoration Network (TIRN), and 500 million, according to Colorado-based nonprofit Eco-Cycle.
“The average lifespan for a straw is 30 minutes. Straws take from 200-500 years to decompose and continue to be a threat to wildlife as they photo-degrade into microplastics. Plastic pollution — like single-use plastic straws — impact critically endangered sea turtles at every stage of their life,” TIRN says.
“To prevent another sea turtle from becoming a victim to plastic, we must make personal lifestyle alterations to fight for these species,” the group said in a statement, the Associated Press reported.
Conversely, the move was praised by CEO of the Plastics Industry Association Matt Seaholm. In a post on X, Seaholm thanked Trump.
“On behalf of the plastics industry and anyone who has ever been forced to use a paper straw, thank you, Mr. President!” he wrote.
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In another post, he said: “This is so great. Thank you, Mr President. We stand ready to be a resource as the Domestic Policy Council looks at the plastics issue further.”
Meanwhile, in Canada, the government released a science assessment of plastic pollution in October 2020. Environment and Climate Change Canada then proposed next steps in order to achieve the goal of zero plastic waste by 2030, per the federal government. In June 2022, the government released the Single-use Plastics Prohibition Regulations. It took effect in December 2022.
“Single-use plastic (SUP) straws are prohibited by the Regulations, including straight straws and flexible straws packaged with beverage containers (i.e., juice boxes and pouches),” according to a fact sheet about the ban provided by the federal government.
The government noted exceptions for the ban, allowing the use of plastic straws “for people in Canada who require them for medical or accessibility reasons,” including “for use at home, in social settings, or in healthcare settings, such as hospitals and long‑term care facilities.”
“All other types of single-use plastic straws will be prohibited,” the government said in a news release.
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