Dianne Laurine, 75, remembers a time when straws were made of paper. They were ineffective for her drinking, because a lack of jaw control associated with cerebral palsy caused her to bite through them. Her handyman father crafted a reusable solution by cutting rubber tubing to make straws, but those were unsanitary. “It was awful … I can’t get them clean,” Laurine recalls her father’s invention.<\/p>\n
But the advent of plastic straws in the 1960s changed her life. The single-use plastic items offered durability and flexibility that allowed Laurine to hydrate with greater ease, and they didn’t require cleaning. “I can’t drink without them,” Laurine says on a Friday afternoon, as her caretaker Bill Reeves sits beside her at Queen Anne’s Uptown Espresso and repeats her words for clarity. Plastic straws are so essential to her lifestyle, in fact, that Laurine carries a few in a backpack that’s strapped to her wheelchair at all times.<\/p>\n
While non-disabled people often consider plastic straws an amenity if not an environmental nuisance, they are a necessity for many people with disabilities who rely on the bendable tubes to drink fluids or take medicines independently. For those with mobility impairments like Laurine, it’s difficult to hold cups without spilling the beverages, and alternatives to plastic straws made out of bamboo and metal can cause injury if they unintentionally bite down on them.<\/p>\n
Her dependency on plastic straws became all the more acute a couple of weeks ago when she learned while watching the news that Seattle would become the first major U.S. city to ban plastic straws, utensils, and cocktail picks on July 1. “I was mad,” she says. A filmmaker by trade, and commissioner with the advocacy group Seattle Commission for People with disAbilities, the Shoreline resident is only two houses away from the city border, and often dines in Seattle.<\/p>\n
Cities and businesses throughout the world have joined the strawless bandwagon in record speed throughout the past few years in response to public outcry about their contribution to ocean pollution. One 2014 study cited over 250,000 tons of plastic waste in the ocean<\/a>. In an effort to reduce the environmental impact of single-use plastic, Davis<\/a> and San Luis Obispo, Calif.<\/a>, and Miami Beach, Fla<\/a>., passed ordinances to reduce or ban plastic straw use; New York has also proposed legislation to outlaw plastic straws. On July 9, Starbucks announced that it would eliminate single-use plastic straws from its stores worldwide by 2020<\/a> by offering recyclable strawless lids, or straws made out of paper or compostable plastic.<\/p>\n “For our partners and customers, this is a significant milestone to achieve our global aspiration of sustainable coffee, served to our customers in more sustainable ways,” Kevin Johnson, president and chief executive officer for Starbucks, said in a statement.<\/p>\n Yet people with disabilities and their advocates say that the bans disproportionately impact marginalized communities who rely on straws in their everyday life. The issue has to come to a head in Seattle, where the disability community contends that it was not consulted during the city’s rule-making process.<\/p>\n “Requiring people with disabilities to treat a routine fast-food trip as something that requires planning and supplies is an unplanned failure in equity, when these restaurants could just as easily offer them upon request to individuals who need them. Disability is already very expensive, and many people are forced to carry around large amounts of equipment or types of medication and devices. Adding another specialized device, simply for them to be able to hydrate themselves, is an undue burden, and an unfortunate effect of this law,” wrote the Seattle Commission for People with disAbilities in a letter sent to the City Council on June 27.<\/p>\n However, Seattle Public Utilities spokespeople are adamant that the ban would not affect people with disabilities. “We have no intention of making plastic flexible straws unavailable to people who need them,” Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) Spokesperson Andy Ryan said.<\/p>\n The ban originated from a 2008 ordinance designed to phase out single-use plastic items by replacing them with recyclable or compostable items. Businesses that don’t comply with the ban could face a $250 fine.<\/p>\n SPU started its business outreach and education on the harms of single-plastic use in March, 2017. Susan Fife-Ferris, division director of SPU Solid Waste Planning and Program Management, says that the city relied heavily on Lonely Whale for information about the straw ban’s impact on people with disabilities. The ocean advocacy organization started a campaign in September 2017 called “Strawless in Seattle” that involved 150 businesses in the city and resulted in 2.3 million plastic straws being removed from Seattle.<\/p>\n “Our work with the disabled community happened well in advance of the campaign in Seattle,” says Dune Ives, executive director of Lonely Whale. The advisory committee that helped inform their campaigns to eliminate single-use straws was a “loosely organized group of individuals that we connected to early on to make sure that we understood what straws worked for them, and what straws don’t work for them.” Ives says that she sent straws to a few people, and found that for some people with disabilities, silicone-based or compostable plastic straws work best. “There’s always more you can do,” she adds, noting that they had a small team with limited resources at the time. Lonely Whale is working with other cities throughout the nation to implement their own ordinances to ban single-use plastics.<\/p>\n Using the information from outreach and Lonely Whale, SPU published a director’s rule approved by Seattle Public Utilities General Manager\/CEO Mami Hara on May 29, 2018, which provided an exemption for people with disabilities <\/a>from being subject to the ban. The rule contains a waiver, effective from July 1, 2018, to June 30, 2019, allowing “disposable flexible plastic drinking straws when needed by customers due to medical or physical conditions and for whom flexible compostable paper straws are unsuitable. Otherwise, straws must be compostable or designed to be reusable.” Ryan told Seattle Weekly<\/em> that the waiver will continue to be renewed after the 2019 deadline.<\/p>\n