My local coffee shop has done away with single-use plastic drinking straws for cold coffee drinks. Now they put a huge plastic single-use lid that turns their single-use plastic cup into a sippy cup for grown-ups. Progress!
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I remember hearing you could perform an emergency tracheotomy like this, which is most likely an urban myth I have no desire to test.
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Yes, this. Why did the metal ones become so popular?
When my son was getting kids drinks, some restaurants would put it in cheap “souvenir” type cups. They were junk and generally left on the table (hopefully to be recycled…) But the straws in these were all good silicon ones. Easily washable, and not the least bit stabby. Those came home and have been used a lot.
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Fusilli Jerry nods.
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that we sell in the Boing Boing Store.
@SeamusBellamy Do you really want to associate yourself or Boing Boing with the Boing Boing store??
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Bonus, its single use!
/s
“ Now, here’s the thing and, don’t ask me how I know, but you could very easily do the same thing with an OG plastic straw”
Seamus, you’re dead? I sincerely hope not. I also hope that the way you know someone died from an OG straw is not because you were there to witness it. Or, worse, that you were somehow involved (unless it is because you are a highly trained government assassin, in which case, as long as he was a baddie, I approve).
No, saying this is like saying “you could just as easily kill yourself with a pool noodle as a spear”.
You like the reusable straws. I like the reusable straws. Let’s leave it at that, without the hyperbole.
I still want to know if you are an assassin. Unless, of course, having that knowledge means you’d have to kill me with a plastic drinking straw. If so, carry on, friend.
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That’s straight out of Another.
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This seems scripted by Lucio Fulchi somehow. What a graphic way to go, trying not to imagine this
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Yarp.
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Besides, plastic can be recycled several times and/or be eventually made with a plastic compound that could be broken down one day once science finally figures it out. Cigarette butts on the other hand…
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a tragedy. also…can straws like this be hygienic? these and those small mouth water bottles everyone is carrying around make me nervous that they don’t ever get properly cleaned.
Most of the time i’ll be drinking from my own personal metal water bottle so there’s that. I’m boring 
And yeah i specifically bought a wide mouth water bottle for ease of cleaning
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They do generally come with brushes. But then of course the question is whether people will bother to use the brushes often enough. (And of course whether the energy used in the cleaning is greater than what would be required to make and properly dispose of another plastic straw.)
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Yeah, a news story I once read about someone who fell on a glass and had it cut their throat leapt to mind… (I’ve been very careful about carrying glassware ever since.)
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so, according to this article the figure is more likely a 175 billion straws a year…äh, @SeamusBellamy?!?
Freedonia Group, a market research firm that covers a broad range of industries, arrived at a higher estimate: 142 billion straws last year, or 390 million per day
My wife’s grandmother fell backwards in a seated position onto the dishwasher after Christmas supper one year. It still messes me up thinking of what would have happened to her if she did that in her own house alone, and not with us there. I jumped up and picked her up off of it within a few seconds, the knife went a couple inches into her butt. If she sat on there it would work itself in who knows how far in the 12 hours it would take someone to wonder why she wasn’t answering the phone and go check on here. Yikes.
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That’s definitely terrifying, it doesn’t take much for elderly people or those with mobility/coordination issues to take a nasty fall out of nowhere. My grandma, who has since passed away, would lose her balance and hit her head or face on things and get really bad bruises. It broke my heart when i would see her on Skype like that, but i was always thankful that the times she hurt herself was when someone was home with her.
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Oh no. Your poor grandma! For this reason, I have told all of my elderly relatives that they should all wear helmets all of the time (joking:not joking!). My oldest uncle died after fainting and suffering a traumatic brain injury when he hit his head in the fall. Scary.
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?
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