The marine life can eat them thinking they are food, and they later turn out to harm their system.
Aside that, when the plastic straws begin to decompose, they release some harmful toxins like BPA which pollute our waterbodies.
In order to help tackle the scourge of plastic straws, some groups such as the Last Plastic Straw, Lonely Whale, Be Straw Free and Straw Free have emerged. Additionally, many alternatives for the plastic straws such as the rice straws and the metal straws have also been invented.
An innovation by a Vietnamese man, Tran Minh Tien has shown that a certain type of grass, Lepironia articulata that is prolific around the Mekong Delta in Vietnam can be converted into drinking straws.
These straws of course do not contain any preservatives and chemicals, and are biodegradable.
Mr. Tran Minh Tien the owner of Ong Hut Co explained the whole process of making the straws from the grass in a Facebook video.
According to him, they first collect the hollow stems of the grass, and then wash and cut them into 20 cm lengths. The tubes are cleaned on the inside with a metal rod.
After a second round of washing, the straws are bundled together and wrapped in banana leaved. Amazing!
The straws come in two versions - one dried and another fresh.
The dried ones are laid out in the sun for 2-3 days, and then baked in an oven and they last longer. The fresh ones are kept in a refrigerator for 2 weeks, or in room temperature for a week.
A dried straw costs around 4.3 cents while the fresh ones cost around 2.6 cents. These straws can only be used once in restaurants but can be reused multiple times at home.
The video posted on Facebook went viral, and gathered over 35,000 shares and 2 million views.
Social media users have commended these youngster, and one wrote, 'need to grow this on a mass scale. no more plastic straws.'
Another user had also written, 'One step closer to a plastic free world👍 keep up the good work.'
and yet another, 'This is a great, sustainable straw. I love it,'
The company also specified how to use the straws on their website, and you can either soak it in ordinary water, boiled water, salt water or even soapnut.
They also requested that after one usage, they should be dropped into a compost bin.
These grass straws can only be purchased in Vietnam for now, perhaps the rest of the world will adopt it in the nearest future.
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