• Plastics: Ocean pollution reaches 10,000 meters deep

The one who has eaten regularly in an average American restaurant will have met again and again with the same scene: a waiter or waitress loaded with glasses of water for the table and all with their respective plastic straw. So, without asking. As of this Tuesday in Los Angeles, the default straws are prohibited.

The regulations come after the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, signed a law in November to drastically reduce the consumption of plastic straws in restaurants , a pioneer movement in the United States and in line with the ecological spirit of the Golden State .

The measure approved by Los Angeles goes a bit further since it includes fast food chains. From now on they can only give a plastic straw to customers if they expressly request it. At the moment, Malibu and San Francisco are the only two locations in California that have taken the step to ban their use altogether. Out of state, Seattle, in Washington, has also added to the measure .

Washington DC New York and Hawaii are working on regulations to ban them at the state level but it is not yet official.

4% of the world's plastic waste

The objective is to fight against one of the most polluting elements in the daily activities of Americans. Here, 500 million straws are thrown away every day, according to a report by Lonely Whale Campaign, a waste that already accounts for 4% of plastic waste worldwide. The aggravating factor is that it can take up to a thousand years to decompose.

In California in particular, they represented the sixth most common element among waste found on the coast between 1998 and 2006, behind cigarettes, food packages, lids, bags and plastic utensils, according to a municipal report.

Fines for restaurants that fail to comply with the measure will not be high, though. Each establishment that does not respect it will be sanctioned with 25 dollars and up to a total of 300 dollars a year . According to Councilor Mitch O'Farrell, there are already many establishments that have begun to adapt to the current that prevails. "Locals throughout the city are opting for biodegradable alternatives while many Angels are using reusable straws."

The measure is the continuation of regulations approved in April last year that limited the use of plastic straws in establishments with more than 26 employees. Now, it affects the entire guild .

It is one more step within an upward movement. Last year, a 16-year-old girl managed to convince Alaska Airlines to stop using polluting products for the ocean such as drinking straws and plastic beverage sticks. In 2017 alone, the company admitted using 22 million units.

The Starbucks coffee chain has already announced that it will stop using straws before 2020 and McDonald's has joined the measure in its restaurants in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Finding them in Vancouver, Scotland and Taiwan will also become complicated from now on.

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