Whether you’re a small business or a huge multi-national, making the change from plastic to paper straws bulk usage may seem like an inconvenience at best; an unwelcome additional expense at worst. It may also seem unnecessary. Surely straws aren’t that much of a hazard by themselves when you compare them to the sheer amount of other plastic packaging we discard on a daily basis? One of the key motivators behind the high profile campaign to reduce the use of plastic straws was a 2015 viral campaign on the internet after a researcher released a video of a sea turtle in Costa Rica with a plastic straw embedded in its nose. This perfectly illustrated the issue: that even a small, apparently insignificant item can cause such distress to ocean life. And because plastic is so robust a material, a feature it was once praised for, it doesn’t degrade or recycle. So discarded straws can linger on for thousands of years, mounting up and forming life-threatening masses in oceans worldwide, such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This lies between Hawaii and California, is largely made up of discarded plastics (including drinking straws), is twice as big as the state of Texas and growing all the time. It’s a frightening thought. The move to use paper straws bulk UK and worldwide is a small but helpful awareness-raising initiative: if we can persuade people to change their behaviors in little ways, larger change will follow. Sales of biodegradable, more environmentally-friendly bulk paper straws UK wide are increasing as individuals insist on less harmful alternatives to single-use plastics.