Photo by Chad Guin.
When in the research phase of Fvck Plastic I was watching a lot of videos and reading what people thoughts about the use of alternative plastics. There seems to be a strong community behind the cause, the one thing I found shocking was the small community of people who are just strait up against the use of things like reusable straws...it’s one thing to be unaware and uneducated about plastic in the oceans, but there’s people who are almost defending that everything is fine in our oceans? Claims being made such as “the US is only responsible for 1% of plastic in the ocean.” Is it a competition on how much plastic a country can put into our oceans? This problem isn’t just a problem of the United States or any other country, this is a problem that we’re facing as humans on earth. It seems to me that some of those against cleaning the oceans were putting some political agenda behind this? Once again, I don’t care if you’re right leaning or left leaning. We all live on the same earth.
The other small group of people I noticed around this issue is those who are “too cool.” Which I get this, some of us are set in our ways and using something such as a reusable straw would be going against the norm. I’m here to tell you it’s okay, using a reusable straw or a reusable water bottle isn’t going to kill you. I understand that you’ll stand out when you ask for no straw at the restaurant, I understand your friends might harass you for whipping out your straw. All of these are small prices to pay to make a big impact. Even if you don’t think something as small as a straw is making a big impact it is, there’s a strength in numbers the more of us that do it the more of impact we have.
Overall I’m proud of the community that is behind this movement, thank you. For those of you who are putting a political agenda behind this and pretending nothing is wrong, well by the looks of it most of you looked like you were close to the end of your career anyways. Those of you who just aren’t sure about it, why not try it? We’re literally giving the straws away for free.
