It’s hard to believe that someday we are going to look back at the time you would get a plastic straw with your beverage at restaurants as “the good old days”. The new trend is for restaurants to no longer provide you with plastic straws–unless you ask for one. Some eateries are taking that even farther by not stocking any straws–but most of those are not “to go” type of places. The rationale is that by not distributing so many straws, there will be less plastic in the oceans and Great Lakes someday.
My wife and I recently ate at one of those “no more straws” places here in Oshkosh. I ordered an Arnold Palmer–a mix of sweet tea and lemonade. It came in a tall glass with plenty of ice. As I got close to finishing the drink, I realized a problem of physics that threatens to derail the “no straws movement”. You see, the closer you get to the bottom of a strawless drink, the greater the angle you must tip your glass to get what’s left to pour in to your mouth. But as you do that, you reach that critical angle where all of the ice in the glass also releases and threatens to come spilling out–all over your face and your lap.
That leaves strawless consumers with a choice: end up wearing your drink–or leave some of it in the glass every time. As someone who believes in getting everything that he paid for, I cannot accept the latter–so I have will to run the risk of dumping out ice into my lap to get those last few ounces of soda. However, this also provides yet another opportunity for an enterprising person with a gift for engineering to develop new drinkware that addresses this issue.
One option would be adult sippy cups, featuring reusable plastic lids that allow liquid to pour out and for the ice to stay in the glass. But how many adults are going to drink their Old Fashioneds like that? Another option would be to develop artificial ice with a greater surface friction that wouldn’t suddenly go sliding down the side of the glass and into your face. But that would also have to contain nothing that could poison us. Or we could go European and just not put ice in any of our drinks. It’s not particularly refreshing–and it would force bars to buy very small cocktail glasses since most drinks are 85% ice.
Eventually, diners leaving restaurants with soaked shirts and pants will decide that a little bit of plastic in the ocean is a small price to pay for being able to drink with their meals–and straws will make a glorious comeback. But until then, you may want to ask for a bib.
