Yesterday I had lunch with a friend, and when we placed our drink orders, he made an unequivocal request: “No straw in the water, please.”
It was so deliberate, it caught me off guard. And I had already placed my order, so it was too late for me. Short of a sharp correction (which I never made), the straw was on the way. The server walked off. I felt a heavy judgment looming.
That’s when my friend, Vipe Desai, who also serves on the board of an awesome non-profit called Lonely Whale Foundation, shared the video above with me and proceeded to tell me that I sucked. Which I did. And, like Adrian Grenier and a collection of celebrities in the video above, I have sucked for a long time.
According to research done by Strawless Ocean, 500 million plastic straws are used in the United States every day. If plastic consumption continues at the current rate, by 2050 there will be more plastics than the fish in the ocean. Geez Louise, I say.
So we’ve got to make some adjustments. Strawless Ocean suggests a gesture as simple as quitting straws. Thinking more on it, it’s not as easy as it sounds. I’d imagine it’s kind of like smoking. There’s a physical memory there that needs to be relearned. Restaurants’ and servers’ default offering is a straw. And it’s inexplicably enjoyable to drink fluid from a straw – poking at ice cubes and mixing a cocktail and whatnot. But after Vipe took a picture of me and told me that I sucked, I couldn’t disagree. So I decided this was the last straw. Literally. Here it is. My last one.
This is my last straw. I’m quitting sucking. Photo: Vipe Desai
I’ve decided to quit plastic straws, and I’m challenging all of our readers here at The Inertia to join me and take on the challenge to #StopSucking. You can sign up for the challenge at strawlessocean.org. I’m tired of sucking my whole life. Maybe you should be, too.
