That little plastic straw that comes attached to your juice box may seem so trivial a matter to be up in arms about, till you really listen to what the environmentalists are telling you. More than 500 million straws are used on the planet everyday. That’s enough to circle the Earth two and half times.

The plastic straws take nearly 200 years to decompose completely. That means every plastic straw that was ever manufactured is still in existence on the planet today. What’s worse, the places that recycle plastic are unable to recycle straws. This means the number of straws is constantly increasing.

Since most litter ends up in the ocean, the straws in the ocean are constantly increasing. This affects the marine ecology. Many sea animals and fish are hurt due to plastic straws. Either because it was hard and poked them, or they ate it and died because they couldn’t digest it.

Think about the number of straws that you used today. Would you really require so many if you could use a glass to empty your tetra pack drink into? Or even drink directly from the bottle? It would make an interesting science project to find out just how many plastic straws are used in a household in a month.