As good as recycling is, just reducing in the first place is even better especially now with the point you are making, @BunsenBurner.
Just as soon as restaurants and and fast food joints start providing paper straws I’ll be happy to choose them over plastic. But as long as plastic is still the only straw they provide, that’s the one I’m going to use. I haven’t seen a paper straw in a restaurant since the 1960s.
I wonder if restaurants provide straws because it’s so difficult to get lipstick smudges off the rims of glasses.
I usually have to hand wash my glasses to get the lipstick off.
“Just as soon as restaurants and and fast food joints start providing paper straws I’ll be happy to choose them over plastic.”
One can let restaurants they frequent often know that. Sometimes changes need to be consumer driven, unfortunately.
There’s a local ice cream shop in my town that still uses styrofoam cups. I and others have brought it up with them several times. They don’t want to change. I know longer frequent their shop and take my business elsewhere.
Speaking of ice cream, it’s free Ben & Jerry’s day! 
*no longer frequent #-o
Do you buy your ice cream in a waffle or wafer cone then? Because paper cups suitable for contact with foods and beverages have a thin lining of polymer that prevents them from being composted. Big problem for Starbucks. So big that they are investing major $$$ into creating a truly compostable coffee cup.
I’m a sugar cone girl myself. Maybe they should serve more foods in edible “dishes”. The ice cream shop’s refusal to even engage in discussion on the matter still irks me even if I don’t get it in a styrofoam cup myself. They’re free to run their business the way they want but I’m free to take my business elsewhere. Even polymer coated paper would be an improvement over styrofoam. I think they are just being stubborn. And they’re not the best ice cream and price point anyway, so no huge loss on multiple fronts.
There are compostable/biodegradable products available that are made with plant materials.
My fav gelato store has an owner who makes little ceramic cups that the gelato is served in if you eat it in the store and choose that over a disposable or cone or handmade fresh waffle cone. You deposit the cups and spoons in a bin when you’re done so they can be washed and re-used.
I know a thing or two about compostible materials. Sadly, they are not good for beverages. Imagine a piping hot coffee cup failing on a customer? Not good.
What does Whole Foods use for coffee? I’m not a coffee drinker so I don’t know. A lot of their other packaging (prepared food stuff for example) is biodegradable and made from natural fibers like bulrush.
I’ve been to a few music festivals that require their food vendors to use biodegradable products. They don’t seem to have problems but I’m sure they are less litigation sensitive than a huge company like Starbucks.
Yes, but if you look inside of those purportedly super degradable containers… there is a thin film of something. So even if they say the containers are biodegradable, take that with a grain of salt. Starbucks at least acknowledges that it is a problem and is looking into a new solution.
Here’s an article on Starbucks if someone wants to make some $$. 
Seems like part of the problem is tied to limitations with recycling systems. I wonder what they do in some European countries. My kids are really good about always bringing reusable to-go bottles and coffee mugs with them. It’s just habit for them.
http://www.greenmatters.com/food/2018/03/21/Z8pO2P/starbucks-compostable-cup
In Europe, coffee is drunk in ceramic cups. No one walks around with take out coffee in a paper cup. Sadly I think the first Starbucks recently opened over there.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/11/health/sperm-whale-plastic-waste-trnd/index.html
A sad reminder of the impact that all of the plastic has in the environment…
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/the-bewildering-beauty-of-recycled-waste
“Every day, people generate a volume of trash that weighs roughly as much as a million elephants. By 2050, if things don’t change, the plastic waste in the ocean will outweigh the fish. The Belgian photographer Paul Bulteel is deeply interested in this problem, perhaps in part because he lives in a region that seems to be successfully addressing it. Belgium has one of the highest recycling rates in the world: eighty per cent of its total packaging waste and forty-one per cent of its plastic packaging is transformed into new, reusable materials. (The United States recycles no more than fourteen per cent of its plastic-packaging waste.)”
Was going to post the same as TatinG. What’s wrong w/ ceramic, at least for those who are sitting IN a coffee shop on their laptops? Need washing capability, but at least a step in the right direction.
“In Europe, coffee is drunk in ceramic cups. No one walks around with take out coffee in a paper cup. Sadly I think the first Starbucks recently opened over there.”
Huh? Starbucks has more than a thousand stores in Europe. They’ve been there for years.
Even in the US, many coffee shops and some eateries like Panera offer a choice of a mug or a paper cup to folks who eat in.
"What’s wrong w/ ceramic, at least for those who are sitting IN a coffee shop on their laptops? "
Absolutely nothing. It’s great.
are there more biodegradable straws? if not, maybe that’s a potential area of innovation.