Bans on Plastic Straws Are Growing. But Is the Travel Industry Doing Enough?

The United States goes through more than 500 million plastic straws every day, according to Eco-Cycle, a nonprofit recycling organization.

They are used for only a few minutes, but potentially last for hundreds of years in the ocean, and are among the top 10 pollutants collected during beach cleanups.

Plastic straws kill marine life and choke reefs and beaches, never decomposing completely, but instead breaking into bits of microplastics, which eventually enter the food chain.

And so the straw — ubiquitous in most restaurants, bars, cruise ships and luxury resorts — has become a prime example of how tourism can have a deeply negative effect on the environment.

Global momentum has built in recent months to ban plastic straws and replace them with biodegradable ones, in part thanks to numerous social media campaigns.

In February, Queen Elizabeth II issued a rare royal decree banning plastic straws and bottles from all royal estates (and their cafes and gift shops) and pledged to reduce other single-use plastics at all royal functions.

In Britain, the queen’s announcement was just the beginning. Several British corporations — including Waitrose, London City Airport, McDonald’s UK and Costa Coffee — banned plastic straws.

And in mid-April, Prime Minister Theresa May announced a ban on the sale of plastic straws, stirrers and cotton swabs, and called on the 52 Commonwealth nations to implement similar measures.

Elsewhere, cruise companies like P&O, Cunard and Royal Caribbean have announced limits on plastic straws, bottles and packaging aboard its ships, while Carnival will stop placing straws in glasses automatically, but won’t outright ban them.

Airlines have been sluggish to enact change, but Fiji Airways and Thai Airways both pledged to significantly reduce single-use plastic onboard their fleets in 2018, while Ryanair aims to be “plastic free” by 2023.

Many independent hotels have had plastic bans in effect for years, but big chains are only recently catching up. Anantara Hotels will remove straws from its properties by the end of 2018.

So will Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, which in April announced a ban on plastic straws from all 110 of its properties.

The India-based Taj Hotels will phase out plastic straws from in-room dining at all 98 of their hotels, while AccorHotels will prohibit their use in its 83 North and Central American properties by July.

Marriott, the world’s largest hotel company, is making the most substantial changes across several of their hotel brands, including a straw ban at all 60 British properties.

Marriott’s 11 upmarket Edition Hotels will eliminate single-use plastics by 2019, a move made in collaboration with Lonely Whale, an environmental organization.

It will also phase out mini plastic shampoo bottles from 1,500 of its North American hotels, including the brands Courtyard, Fairfield and Residence Inns, to be replaced by wall-mounted dispensers.

These changes are projected to eliminate 10.4 million plastic bottles, accounting for 113,000 pounds of plastic waste a year.

Spirit companies have joined the fight, stating that there’s no place for plastics in cocktails. Bacardi launched its No Straw campaign in 2016, estimated to eliminate 1 million straws a year.

This year Diageo and Pernod Ricard, owners of the Absolut, Baileys and Smirnoff brands, banned straws and stirrers from global affiliates, functions and ads.

While this all adds up to progress for conservationists, the big question is why so much of the travel sector is resistant to change. Many big luxury hotel brands, airlines and cruise ship companies — notorious for their oceanic waste and high carbon footprints — remain slow to curb unnecessary single-use plastics like bottles, slipper wrappers and plastic swabs that end up in the very oceans and beaches their guests travel across the world to experience.

“It’s surprising that the travel industry doesn’t show more leadership in terms of sustainable practices,” said Clark Mitchell, a former editor at Travel & Leisure and now a director at the Band Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to biodiversity conservation. “People go on a cruise to see beautiful islands, clear waters and gorgeous beaches. These companies have a direct stake in keeping these places pristine. And yet single-use plastic like straws are literally everywhere a traveler looks, in the drinks being sold, in the water and on the beach.”

Sonu Shivdasani, chief executive of Soneva Resorts, a small luxury hotel chain emphasizing sustainability that banned single-use plastics in 2008, echoed that sentiment.

“Hotels serve the richest 30 percent of the world’s population, and in doing so, consume far too many natural resources that weigh negatively, impacting the other 70 percent of society,” he said. “We, as an industry, continue to consume far more than our fair share of resources.”

For luxury travelers, another question lingers: Why do high-end resorts have single-use plastic in their rooms in the first place?

“Travelers spending over $400 a night on a hotel room shouldn’t be drinking from a cheap plastic bottle,” Mitchell said. “Plastic is not luxury.”