Plasticless: a comparative life-cycle, socio-economic, and policy analysis of alternatives to plastic straws
Abstract
Around 500 million plastic straws per day are being consumed in the U.S. (U.S. National Park Service, 2019), and nearly 7.5 million straws are reported to lie around U.S. shorelines (Borenstein, 2018). The estimated cost of plastic pollution is reported to be $13 billion in economic damage to marine ecosystems each year (Avio et al., 2017). The ongoing action against the use of single-use plastic straws has created a surging demand for sustainable alternatives to plastic straws, with nearly ten types of single-use and reusable drinking straws now on the market. Given that no one study quantifies and compares the environmental impact of these various straw types, this study uses the Cumulative Energy Demand and the IPCC 2013 GWP 100a V1.03 impact assessment methods in the SimaPro8.5 database to conduct a limited life-cycle assessment (LCA) of the standard plastic straw and its most commonly used alternatives: the paper straw, the bioplastic/compostable (PLA) straw, and the (reusable) metal straw. The study also assesses the blue carbon and carbon dioxide sequestration potential of the seaweed-based straw. The use of a (reusable) metal straw was found to have a significantly lower overall environmental impact than that of other straws over one year, provided that the use of hot water is avoided when washing the metal straw and that the standard washing time is cut to half. Over 85 percent of the environmental impacts reported came from the washing of the metal straw,…
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