In the United Kingdom, McDonald’s did away with plastic straws last year and replaced them with paper straws, but customers aren’t happy. Complaints about the paper straws not lasting long enough to finish a drink caused McDonald’s to increase the strength and thickness of the paper straws, making the straws harder to recycle with their waste provider who recycles their paper cups.
So now people are wondering if the 1.8 million straws that McDonald’s uses each day in the UK are ever going to be recycled or just continue to end up in the landfill. One plastics campaigner from Friends of the Earth told the New York Post that the focus should be on eliminating straws altogether and that “Lips have been a waste-free alternative to straws for millions of years.”