US president Donald Trump has issued an executive order to end the federal use of paper straws and encourage consumers to switch back to plastic, reversing Biden-era measures to curb plastic pollution.

The order signed by the president on Monday requires the federal government to fade out purchases of paper straws for its own operations and calls for the development of a National Strategy to End the Use of Paper Straws.

Trump’s directive overturns a strategy set out last year by former president Joe Biden to phase out single-use plastics including straws, cutlery and packaging from federal operations by 2035.

“We’re going back to plastic straws,” Trump told reporters while signing the order at the White House on Monday.

“These things don’t work,” he complained of the paper alternatives. “I’ve had them many times, and on occasion, they break, they explode. If something’s hot, they don’t last very long, like a matter of minutes, sometimes a matter of seconds.”

US using 390 million plastic straws a day

Trump’s vendetta against “liberal” paper straws goes back to his 2020 election campaign when he sold plastic alternatives laser-engraved with his own name that reportedly earned him nearly $500,000 in a matter of weeks.

Monday’s executive order lists several concerns with paper straws beyond useability, including their comparatively higher carbon footprint and higher concentration of PFAS “forever chemicals”, which can stay in the environment for decades and cause a variety of health issues.

Instead, the Trump administration is pushing for the return of plastic straws, falsely claiming that they contain “no measurable PFAS” although studies have proven the opposite.

More than 390 million plastic straws are used in the US every day, most for only 30 minutes or less despite taking around 300 years to break down in the environment.

These straws are generally too small to be processed in municipal recycling centres and made of polypropylene, a thermoplastic that’s notoriously difficult to recycle.

Globally, only nine per cent of the plastic we use is recycled. At three per cent, that number is even lower for polypropylene, 97 per cent of which is either incinerated or sent to landfills, generating emissions and leeching microplastics into the environment.

Stainless steel offers promising alternative

Research suggests that reusable stainless steel straws offer the most sustainable alternative as they are free of PFAS chemicals and can be endlessly recycled – although they have to be used between 37 to 63 times for their carbon footprint to break even with plastic straws.

Straws are only a drop in the ocean of plastic pollution. But they have come to serve as a stand-in for the larger question of how to tackle this urgent issue, as global plastic waste is set to triple by 2060.

Last year, a summit among 200 nations aiming to agree on a Global Plastics Treaty failed to come to a deal as several countries – including the US under Biden – shied away from setting global binding targets to limit plastic production.

After Trump used his first days in office rolling back environmental protections and withdrawing the US from the Paris Climate Agreement for the second time, critics are now warning that his administration could “spell doom” for a strong plastics treaty.

The photo is courtesy of Shutterstock.

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