Congratulations to St. James Gate for making efforts to reduce its ecological footprint! The local company’s restaurants in Moncton, Dieppe and Shediac are no longer offering plastic straws to their customers.
According to the owner, Kolin Barely, his is the first establishment in Moncton to cut out plastic straw use entirely, after he found that all three St James Gate locations go through around 150,000 straws annually.
Barley based his decisions on the fact that straws are either not recyclable or very difficult to recycle, since they are too light in weight to be processed properly and most end up in the ocean.
“When you really think about how many of those straws are going into oceans and landfills just from your restaurants, it’s very disheartening,” he told the Telegraph-Journal in an interview.
According to Lonely Whale, an American foundation that advocates for ocean issues, 500 million straws are used in the United States daily.
Lonely Whale launched a #stopsucking campaign, which encourages people to abstain from straws. According to a study mentioned in their campaign, more straws than fish could exist in the ocean by the year 2050, if straw consumption continues at the same rate.
For the straw-lovers who find it hard to quit there are other options, however. Barley himself is searching for alternatives to plastic straws, including sugar-based and paper straws, which he hopes to offer in his restaurants shortly.
“I think the more people go through life, the more conscious they are of plastic and it’s something the business community has to embrace”, he says.
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