Bamboo
toothbrush
5 alternatives to plastic straws and a winner
– with one important caveat
·
We
tested five alternatives to plastic straws: stainless steel, etched copper,
glass, bamboo, and Khanyiso reed.
·
All
are re-usable, two are both bio-degradable and renewable – and none have the
long-term environmental impact of plastic.
·
We
had a strong preference for the most expensive of the five, though it will take
two extra accessories to make it practical.
·
We tried five re-usable alternatives to plastic straws now
available in South Africa for between R15 and R95 each, plus shipping – compared
to the around R1 each for "premium" disposable plastic straws.
·
Testing with hot beverages quickly showed that metal straws,
both copper and to a lesser extent stainless steel, have serious problems
because they so efficiently conduct heat. Our bamboo straw left a bad taste,
and an alternative reed straw was nearly as bad.
·
Glass, on the other hand, made for an extremely pleasant straw –
just not one that can be carried around with any safety.
·
See also: A
desperately thin whale washed up dead on a beach
Copper: not great.
Our supplier Faithful to Nature lauds
copper for having "a definitively lux appeal" in
a straw. Our straw, however, arrived already marked and scuffed, and very
quickly picked up more scratches in ordinary use. Its aesthetic appeal will not
last.
Functionally
it serves its purpose well enough – unless you put it in something hot or cold,
in which case it quickly becomes unpleasant to hold or have between your lips.
Stainless steel:
The stainless steal straw mercifully
conducted heat slightly less well than copper, and so became only mildly
unpleasant to use with hot or cold beverages.
If
there were nothing better around, stainless steel could do, though it had no
real virtue.
Khanyiso reed: everything hot tastes woody
quickly, and anything cold tastes woody eventually.
The Khanyiso reed, we are told, "grows
naturally and abundantly in Mozambique". It makes for a bad straw.
Used
to sip a hot beverage, it immediately flavoured everything with an unpleasant
aftertaste. It is not much better at cold liquid, the nasty taste just takes
slightly longer to manifest.
Bamboo: horrible.
Bamboo is made into serviceable, and
sometimes great, cooking utensils. In its raw form, however, this straw
provided a horrific drinking experience. It immediately tainted everything with
the taste of green wood. It rendered a cup of hot coffee undrinkable after
being left to stand in it for less than a minute.
Worst
of all, the aftertaste lingered.
Glass: a clear winner, if only...
The South
African made Restraw was a stand-out winner. It suffers none of
the heat conductivity or taste issues of other straws. The thick, rounded edges
are pleasant in the mouth. It is entirely thick and sturdy enough to clamp
satisfyingly between the teeth.
It
was also the only clear straw in our test, enabling the kind of fun only
possible with a transparent straw.
Being see-through made it the only straw we
could trust to actually be clean, and clear of the kind of fluff and grime that
accumulates in bags.
This
glass straw had a slightly annoying habit of rolling around when put down on
what was even the most apparently level of surfaces. The several times it
dropped to our industrially-carpeted floors did it no harm though.
The Restraw, though thick and sturdy, did
not survive our simulation of rough handling in a handbag (which consisted of
gently lobbing it against a wall.) Our newsroom floor consensus is that we
would be happy to be offered it as a utensil at a restaurant, but would be
uncomfortable carrying around our own.
So
this glass straw is a clear winner with one important caveat: it requires a
sturdy carry case. Most likely something made of rigid plastic, rather than the hemp sleeve its makers provide.
And
when we replace our now broken glass straw, we will make sure it comes with a
cleaning brush, which ours did not. Though it is dishwasher safe, the inner
diameter is too small to be sure that anything other than a hand scrub will get
it clean.
.
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