With these last warm days of summer we indulge in an iced vanilla latte, or maybe a strawberry hibiscus tea with a splash of lavender. Whatever your preference, that refreshing drink comes with adverse consequences. What?! What I’m talking about is plastic specifically: plastic straws.
As of April 2018, all of our coffee shops in New Jersey and New York only use recyclable or reusable straws!
Why should you care about reducing your plastic straw consumption?
We’ve all done it at some point, so what’s the harm? That straw used one time for an iced latte takes hundreds of years to break down. Most straws end up either in landfills, or because they are super lightweight, end up drifting into the ocean. Straws are one of the top ten plastics found on beach cleanups. Because they are so lightweight and small, once in the ocean marine animals such as shorebirds and sea turtles end up getting entangled or ingesting them. Here is a video of a sea turtle getting a straw removed from its nose. When ocean plastics break down, the microplastics enter the marine food web by tiny fish ingesting them. It’s estimated that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than marine life.
What is Java Love doing?
To avoid contributing to the 500 million straws that are used daily, Java Love is selling reusable straws as part of our commitment to sustainable practices at all levels of our company. We have metal and bamboo alternatives. Metal is very durable, the quality is great 18/8 food grade steel and will not make your drink taste metallic. Bamboo is another alternative and the most eco-friendly option. Bamboo straws have a faster life cycle than our steel options, but you can put them in your compost once you’re done because they are 100% biodegradable.
Additionally, we offer paper “Strawless Ocean” straws as well as compostable straws made of corn.
Now you do your part!
How can you help?
Join Java Love and the #stopsucking movement. Say no to single-use plastic straws. With all the environmental problems out there, it’s easy to get lost and not know where to even begin. But small changes like this, that make you take a second to think before you reach for that straw is a great start.
When you buy a drink from Java Love, you are already making a positive impact on the global community. You are purchasing beans that come from a sustainable farm, supporting fair living wages to farmers and their workers, and also supporting a local shop. Whether you know it or not, you are making a decision to help conserve our planet’s resources and give fair wages to the hard workers that make drinking this delicious coffee possible.
We aren’t perfect and plastic is in our lives every day, unfortunately. Just remember before you reach for that straw think about where it might end up, ask yourself if you are willing to make a decision that is going to impact the global community.
