Ah, the not-so-fondly remembered summer holiday car journeys, cramped in the back seat among wet towels, rotting apple cores, ice lolly sticks and sand scattered over all conceivable surfaces. Except there’s one difference these days. The are-we-nearly-there-yets have been replaced by dismayed howls as the juice in drinks cartons remain resolutely locked behind unpuncturable foil.
Meanwhile, the takeaway smoothie that seemed such a good idea at the last services is now lidless and dripping all over faces and T-shirts, its owner long since giving up on the disintegrating straw and greedily slurping strawberry and banana slop straight from the cup.
The humble paper straw, then – for all its environmental virtues – has had a lot to answer for since the restrictions came in on single-use plastic in October 2020. Even US presidential hopeful Kamala Harris – praised as a “proven climate champion” by environmental groups – appears downbeat on their utility. In her latest policy U-turn, the Democrat nominee has said she now no longer wants to implement a ban on plastic straws if elected to the White House. A Harris campaign official told Axios the former California senator had previously “joked … about how crappy paper straws are and the need to come up with better eco-friendly alternatives”.
Put simply, we’ve coped with paper straws shortcomings’ and the wider crackdown on single-use plastic because evidence of collective action – like the success of charging for supermarket plastic bags – is compelling.
When Defra first announced it would be banning the sale of plastic drinking straws – many of which would end up degrading in oceans and landfills for over 300 years – it quoted a study estimating a staggering 8.5 billion of them were thrown away each year in the UK. McDonald’s admitted at the time that it used 1.8 million plastic straws itself – a day.
Clearly, something had to be done. But the alternative – aside from washable metal straws which are ultimately for home use only – was paper straws which, initially at least, would get soggy quickly, be too tempting to chew and leave strange fibres in an Aperol spritz. Also, as one eight-year-old known to this writer once memorably said: “This feels like a bit of wood in my mouth.”
Still, it’s not as if paper straws are a 21st-century solution. They were actually patented before plastic straws – before plastic even existed as a mass-market material – by American Marvin Stone in 1888. The fact that he did so by winding strips of paper around a pencil, removing the pencil, and glueing the strips together was potentially fine; the way he stopped the straws from becoming soggy, though, was to use, er, paraffin-coated manila paper. Possibly not the healthiest option.
But Stone’s attempts to strengthen his straws pointed at the issue which still vexes manufacturers over 130 years later; namely, how to produce a paper product which has resistance to the liquids it encounters while not being coated with harmful substances. And not only should it be biodegradable, but it’s got to be able to pierce the foil on drinks cartons too. Not too much to ask, is it?
“And there’s another key factor,” says Bugra Ozenc, global sales director for Matrix Pack, who produces 20 billion paper straws a year across Europe and in the UK. He said: “Consumer behaviour has had to change. If you’re used to stirring your cocktail or moving ice cubes around in your drink, you’re going to create a stronger reaction between the paper and the liquid, which means the material will break down quicker.”
Basically, those of us partial to a cocktail have had to learn to use the straw for what it was intended; drinking stuff. It’s not a stirrer and it’s definitely not a foodstuff in its own right – tell that to a bored child on a four-hour car journey to Devon. But Ozenc knows where paper straws’ boundaries lie, for Matrix Pack now supplies McDonald’s in the UK.
In the early days of the fast food chain’s move to paper, it felt like McDonald’s milkshakes were basically off the menu unless you wanted to shovel the contents into your mouth with a spoon; the viscosity of the shake basically collapsed the paper straw before you got anywhere near the bottom. What’s changed?
“Interestingly, we got the contract for McDonald’s because they were finding that people were having to use at least two paper straws to get to the end of the shake, which was a huge cost for them. So first of all we had to work out what straw – and what diameter of straw – would work for a specific drink. And then it’s about getting the right make-up of paper weight, the correct layers of paper, and of course factoring in a water-based, food safety compliant adhesive to stick it all together.”
The materials used in the UK and Europe are, on the whole, FSC or EUDR-compliant premium wet-strength papers. Tembo Paper – one of the biggest European producers of paper straws – are clear about this. It usually uses two layers of 120gsm paper and a third one of 60gsm (the GSM of a leaf of regular printer paper is largely 70-80gsm). Other manufacturers might use four layers, but they should all be food-safe papers, as should the adhesives used.
“And that’s why you’ll see the McDonald’s straws are white and not printed on, because we want to avoid any kind of unnecessary additional material,” says Ozenc.
The problem, says Ozenc, is that while big brands such as McDonald’s or Starbucks are now sufficiently Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)-aware to go for this kind of higher quality paper straw, on the high street he sees a lot of mainly Chinese-manufactured paper straws. Produced at high volume and low cost, these straws use coatings and linings that are either unregulated to be used in food delivery or indeed are a form of plastic in themselves and therefore not biodegradable. “Me personally? I wouldn’t want to be giving them to my kids, put it that way.”
“That’s the issue, you want to be producing a straw that doesn’t taste bad and can be super-rigid but is still meeting the standards that people expect,” adds Mark Mitchell, sales director at Transcend Packaging, a Wales-based paper straw manufacturer supplying major international brands.
“Honestly, some of the Chinese imports use toner cartridge ink and superglue, and elsewhere in Europe tests have been done showing these straws could potentially be carcinogenic.”
Transcend supplied U-bend paper straws to Ribena, which, in February 2021, became the first UK-based drinks brand to introduce a paper straw to its drinks cartons. To make this work, they require a sturdy enough straw to pierce that foil. Which, in turn, requires a new proprietary glue to make the end more rigid.
And the proprietary glue, says Mitchell, meets all consumer health and environmental standards. Not that it would actually have to in the UK, where there is no enforcement – for want of a better term – in healthy straw manufacture.
Thankfully, the majority of brands and supermarket own brands now use paper straws on their cartons sourced and manufactured using the correct standards. It’s the packs of 100 paper straws with printing or foil all over them, or indeed paper straws in local restaurants who need a cheap straw fast, which we should be more wary of.
“In Germany, there are spot checks and fines if companies or establishments are using paper straws that don’t meet standards, but we’ve not got there yet,” says Mitchell. “Which is a problem, because it will be uneconomical at some point to try and compete with China. You’re not comparing apples with apples.”
Ultimately, though, there are reasons to be cheerful about the move to paper straws in terms of user experience these days – the innovations in the market since October 2020 mean they are more robust than ones made even a few years ago. Tembo, for example, is pretty clear that they make straws which can withstand immersion in liquid for up to three hours without deforming or disintegrating at the ends.
But, as Harvey Charles, owner of eco-friendly straw manufacturer The Straw Brothers, puts it, maybe we also just need to be a bit more realistic about paper straws too.
“Look, if I make a paper straw that doesn’t break down in the drink over a period of time, then I’ve obviously done something pretty bad to it in the first place. Paper straws have to break down, that’s the whole point of them compared to plastic.”
And it’s important, here, to understand that paper straws aren’t designed to be recyclable – a common criticism in what has become something of a culture war with the banning of plastic ones. Instead, proper paper straws should be biodegradable within two months.
Perhaps, too, we should think about why we’re using straws at all. You wouldn’t expect Charles to go down that route, but he does at least plea for a bit of pragmatism.
He said: “How we always looked at it was: how long would a consumer want to have a paper straw in their drink? You make the straw to last for that particular drink, for that amount of time. It might be higher or lower ply, but in the end, it’s there to help you enjoy that drink for half an hour – not last for hours.”
So, yes, if you or your offspring idle over a drink, today’s straws will get soggy in the end. But crucially, they also won’t lie in landfill for centuries after being discarded. “The main objective, we have to remember, was solving the plastic issue,” adds Charles. “And we’ve done that.”
The one hour challenge: Which high street straw was strongest?
Nine straws from nine high street locations, all left in water for an hour. Only the strong can survive. Isabel Dempsey reveals her findings.
9th: Leon
Coming in an easy last is Leon. No structural integrity to be found. Basically destroyed after a couple of gentle jabs. Next time you order an iced latte from them, be sure to chug it down fast, because the straw’s sipping powers will not hold up for long.
8th: M&S
Undrinkable by the end, the M&S straw was one of the weakest of the bunch. Crumbling under the pressure of a mere two taps, a few more scrunches and swirls might have threatened to break the straw entirely in half. Our advice: get your summer picnic straws from elsewhere.
7th: John Lewis
Unfortunately for John Lewis, this was a marathon and not a sprint. While the straw seemed to be holding up strongly in the first half it lost its stride near the end. Running out of steam, the integrity faltered and its legs met a rather mushy demise.
6th: McDonald’s
It didn’t take much for the Maccies offering to begin to unravel. We watched as the ribbons of paper gracefully unrobed themselves, leaving little straw underneath. While the structural integrity of its undercoat managed to hold up in the glass of water, I fear that a foray with a milkshake would bring it to an easy demise.
5th: Starbucks
It was certainly a close call between Starbucks and Costa. With only a couple of centimetres (of unravelling) in it, unfortunately Starbucks just missed the mark. Much like their coffee, it did the job but failed to impress.
4th: Costa
Sure Costa’s offering began to unravel near the end, but ultimately, it had a good run. Sipping quality firmly intact, suction still strong, if you ever find yourself accidentally stumbling into a branch or are forced there against your will, at least you know their straws will impress. I’m sorry to say I can’t say the same about their coffee.
3rd: Caffè Nero
Much like its place in the British coffee shop scene, Nero was a rather dark horse in this race. Outshining its high street competition with quiet ease, it didn’t let its sogginess pull it apart.
2nd: Pret
Sure it was a bit soft, but Pret’s straw held up remarkably well across the length of the hour, powering through the rigorous swirl and stab tests with grace and decorum. While the company’s subscriptions have reached a sorry end, for the slow sippers of the world, it still might be worth forking out extra for your iced latte.
1st: Joe and the Juice
The Joe and the Juice website reveals their straws are 100 per cent made from paper but, given how sturdy this one was, it’s hard to imagine it biodegrading any time soon. Following a remarkable one hour stint in the water, it appears to have survived our experiment in the type of pre-#savetheturtles condition offered by plastic alternatives.
