Group Hopes To Ban Plastic Straws In Huntington Beach
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Environmentalists in Southern California have focused on a new plastic target.
Huntington Beach-based StrawFree.org is hoping to make its city the first in Orange County to ban straws, which they say is one of the top 10 pieces of garbage polluting the ocean and not recycled by most municipalities.
Plastic straws – both the bendy and non-bendy type – are a ubiquitous modern convenience, offered at every fast-food, fast casual and sit-down restaurant, as well as available for purchase in stores for use at home. The non-profit anti-straw group claims Americans use 500 million of them a day, enough to fill 127 buses.
Diana Lofflin founded StrawFree after seeing a video showing marine biologists removing a straw from a sea turtle's nose, according to the Orange County Register.
But it won't be easy to get Huntington Beach to give up its plastic straws. Before California enacted a state-wide plastic bag ban, Huntington Beach repealed its own municipal ban against the single-use bags.
The group instead advocates the use of bamboo straws, which they say are locally harvested and are handcrafted.
