Bars In Italy Are Beginning To Use Pasta Straws To Lessen Plastic Waste

Oct 18, 2019 by apost team

Some bars in Italy have decided to fight waste and pollution in a novel way: by using straws made of pasta. More specifically, the bars are using bucatini pasta which has a tubular shape just like that of a straw.

In 2018, the European Union had voted to ban single-use plastic items like plates, cutlery, drink stirrers, and straws by 2021 according to My Modern Met. Members of the EU will have to come up with alternatives and stop providing single-use plastic items for free.

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Plastic straws are surprisingly big polluters: They make up about 4 percent of the plastic pollution in the world according to Science X. Different places are, therefore, experimenting with such substitutes as glass or bamboo. In Italy, they’re trying out pasta straws.

A Redditor called GranFabio posted a picture of a drink with a pasta straw that quickly went viral. He commented, “Here in Italy bars are starting to use pasta as straws to reduce plastic use. Our technology amazes the world another time.” The post led to such wisecracks as “Now you’re speaking my linguine!” and “Italian engineering at its finest.”

A company in the UK actually makes pasta straws, that they unsurprisingly claim are superior to plastic or paper straws. Their pasta straws are made from wheat and water and thus biodegrade a lot more quickly than do paper or plastic straws. They are also edible and vegan.

The company's pasta straws can last for over an hour in a cold drink. They are also flavorless, so they don’t affect the taste of a drink. The customer can also snap the straw to adjust it to the size of the glass.

It views itself as more than just a straw company; it sees itself as a “gateway” to more sustainable thinking and acting. By encouraging the use of pasta straws, it seeks to demonstrate that some environmentally sustainable acts are both easy and inexpensive.

Have you read about straws made of pasta before? Would you use one? Please post your comments in the box below.