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Yesterday was America Recycles Day, today is National Fast Food Day.  I don't have to point out the incongruity between the days - the fast food industry creates tons of paper, plastic (and straw) waste which unfortunately, is often NOT recycled.  Many restaurants remind you to recycle your coffee cup, but don't offer a recycling bin on the premises to make it easy for you to do so ( Starbucks appears to be the exception).  Straws are handed out with every beverage, whether or not it was requested.  Sandwiches are either put into styrofoam containers or waxed paper, and everything is put in a paper sack.  These items sometimes make it into recycling bins, but mostly they don't, and even worse, many of these items cannot be recycled. According to an 2015 article written by Peter Lehner, former Executive Director of the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the United States has one of the lowest recycling rates of any developed nation.  He points out...

Our mission?  To eliminate plastic straws.   Completely and entirely, one straw at a time. Why?    Because one-use plastics are terrible for the environment.  Plastic kills marine life. How do we know this?   While in Chicago recently, we went to the Shedd Aquarium and learned a lot of facts.  For example, plastic does not biodegrade, it photo degrades into smaller pieces which marine animals eat.  Also, did you know that 300 million plastic straws are used per day?   Think about that for a minute.   We are starting our own campaign to turn down plastic straws in restaurants.  To encourage restaurants to hand out a straw by request only. There's been lots of research done on the topic of single-use plastics by many scientists, researchers and environmentalists.   Our mission is to educate others to be aware of this vast body of research, to reduce and even eliminate individual plastic straw ...