Plastic straws are becoming a thing of the past. That straw that you threw away yesterday? It will be in a landfill for up to 200 years! Considering how many straws you can easily go through in a day (all those iced-coffees, movie sodas, and Slurpees add up, yo,) taking up to 200 years to decompose all those bits of plastic is distressing.

Some businesses are dropping the need for straws altogether, like these new sippy cup lids from Starbucks.

Starbucks Strawless Sippy Cups

Other restaurants, especially with their to-go menu, haven’t caught up on the issue at all.

But some, like Swiss Chalet at least, simply won’t give you a straw.

While I’m all for banning plastic straws, drinking from the lip of the plastic glass is kinda gross for me. Not sure why exactly, it just squicks me out.

And, I’m very much done with adding more plastic to garbage mountains, just so I can have a drink. It’s crazy to think that the straws that 6 years old me used for school lunches are still in the baby stages of decomposition. Ew.

Yay for Amazon, and their massive list of reusable metal, glass and even bamboo straws to choose from though!

Here are the Amazon deals for reusable straws that interest me the most:

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Reusable Stainless Steel Drinking Straw

If you have a Chatime near you, they have an excellent stainless steel reusable straw available for $5, including cleaning brush and travel pouch. Love mine!

reusable stainless steel straw available at Chatime | Geek Life: Augmenting Reality

Otherwise, here’s my current fave option from Amazon…

Reusable stainless steel drink straws with pouch.
Reusable Stainless Steel Drinking Straws

Reusable Silicone Drink Straws

Reusable Straw - Silicone Softy Straw
Reusable, Silicone Softy Straws

Reusable Glass Drinking Straws

Reusable glass drinking straws
Alink Reusable Glass Drinking Straws

Recyclable Paper Drinking Straws

If the idea of cleaning straws doesn’t quite work for you yet, here are paper straws that you can carry around, or keep in your car.

Paper drinking straws are much better than plastic.
Pick up a large pack of paper drinking straws, if cleaning straws is just not your thing yet.

Have you found an awesome travel straw yet? Will you ever use a plastic straw again?