Adrian Grenier's Last Straw

Adrian Grenier has had it with drinking straws.

-  Andrew Janson and Charles Warner

Not because the little paper wrapper is hard to open, or because if they bend and split they become useless, but because they are a perfect example of an unnecessary single-use plastic. “We all encounter plastic straws daily,” Grenier tells us. “And we use plastic straws senselessly to the tune of 500 million plastic straws a day.”

You read that right. Five hundred million straws a day. Roughly 10 percent of that 500 million will eventually find its way into the ocean, and if this trend keeps up, Grenier estimates that by 2035 there might be more plastic in the ocean than fish. And that’s to say nothing of the damage it’s already doing to marine life the world over.

One of the aims of Grenier’s latest project, the Lonely Whale Foundation (which he started in 2015 with producer Lucy Sumner) is to spread awareness about this issue and start a movement away from such a heavy reliance on single-use plastics. But why start with straws? Because, as Grenier says, “single-use plastic straws are the low-hanging fruit, the gateway to a lifestyle that eliminates single-use plastics.”

Straws are something most people use, and, as such, they represent an easy first step in the holistic lifestyle change that needs to happen before we see single-use plastics completely phased out. The Lonely Whale Foundation is currently launching their #StrawlessOcean campaign, which encourages people to ditch the plastic straws that they use at restaurants or in their own homes.