Plastic straws (which are single-use items) become a large problem for the environment after they are thrown away.
The USA alone uses over 390 million plastic straws each day (Source: New York Times), and most of those end up either in landfills or polluting the environment.
Plastic straws create a huge problem when they are improperly disposed. When a plastic straw enters the environment, it can get carried by the wind and rain into bodies of water (like rivers), and eventually enter the ocean.
Once there, plastic can be extremely harmful to various marine animals and to the ocean ecosystem. Plastic can mistaken for food, and can choke or kill animals like birds or sea turtles.
To make matters worse, plastic straws are not biodegradable, and they aren’t accepted by the majority of curbside recycling programs either. This means that once a plastic straw is used and thrown out, it will always remain in the environment as a piece of plastic.