WASHINGTON — Can you sip a Slurpee through a paper straw? Lots of folks in D.C. are going to find out. Monday is the day the city starts fining businesses up to $800 for giving out plastic straws and stirrers.
The city has been working on this for a long time, but plenty of places are still out of compliance. Along the strip of fast and fast casual restaurants on Wisconsin Ave, NW in Tenleytown, 7/11, Popeye's, and Z-Burger, customers were still getting plastic straws.
Galvanized by a viral video of a sea turtle with a plastic straw stuck up it's nose, cities across the country are banning stores and restaurants from handing them out.
On the Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Ronny Chieng needled a DC inspector about the city's ban. "If I stuck a straw up my nose, I could get 35 million views on YouTube?" he joked, while pretending to stuff a straw painfully up his nose.
D.C. has been warning stores and restaurants around the city for months now that they'll be subject to fines starting July 1.
Z Burger's Peter Tabibian isn't sure the ban is a great idea. But he's tossing out tens of thousands of plastic straws and promising to replace them with something safer for the environment. "I ordered metal straws," he said. "That's what's really going to help the environment."
D.C. says businesses can use bamboo, hay, steel or glass -- or no straw at all. Just not plastic.
Straws may be only a small percentage of the plastic waste we dump. But millions already pollute our waterways."It doesn't disintegrate in the water," said Benjamin Gildea, 8, sipping guiltily on a soda with a plastic straw. "So it gets in turtles' noses, so I really believe that these straws should be banned."
Here's one more wrinkle. Businesses are still required to keep a few plastic straws on hand for people with disabilities who find it tough to use any other kind.