The ecological impact of malted milk

Who’da thunk a sippy stick would ever become such big deal?

Just goes to show that a guy can never know just which straw will break the camel’s back – or in this case fill up the whole darn Pacific Ocean…

Or something like that.

Whatever the case may be, all of a sudden the common soda straw has earned a place on the environmentalists’ Ten Most Wanted List – moving up a notch or two following Mr. Pruitt’s unexpected unemployment.

Yes, it seems the ubiquitous plastic soda straw is joining chlorofluorocarbons, tetraethyl lead, DDT, and second-hand smoke in the rogues’ gallery of things that make the earth a less inviting place to live.

If you happen to live in the ocean, that is…

For us on land, plastic straws pose no discernible threat, but, on the contrary, make orally suctioning a super-thick chocolate shake a do-able endeavor.

T’wasn’t always such. Those of us of a certain age can recall a time when drinking straws were constructed of readily compostable, bio-degradable, environmentally-friendly and inconveniently collapsible paper. Now a paper straw functioned just fine when submerged in a watery concoction – a bottle of pop, glass of iced tea or the root-beery portion of a root beer float. And, fresh from the wrapper, those spiraled-paper constructs held up reasonably well dealing with the melty-er portions of a double fudge malted as the semi-frozen mixture yielded to thermal convection along the product/container perimeter.

At least for a while.

But paper being paper, even paper permeated with a waxy moisture resistant infusion, eventually moistened, softened and with a cheek-imploding ‘flut!’ yielded to the orally induced air pressure differential – turning an open cylinder to a sealed plane – creating a frustrating obstacle to continued enjoyment of chilly chocolaty goodness.

Annoying, but nothing American industrial ingenuity couldn’t overcome.

Replace paper with un-soggable plastic.

We suckers loved ‘em. We could shove a plastic straw right down the center of the most concrete-like diary bar creation, latch onto it with our most powerful pucker and our cheeks would touch and a vein would bust, but a cast iron sewer pipe wouldn’t have held up better under pressure than that polypropylene soda straw.

And middle school age boys were quick to grasp a secondary, but no less satisfying use.

We weaponized the drinking straw.

Now for any mid-century boy worth his Keds, mastery of the pea-shooter was a skill on a par with tree fort construction, delivering a satisfactory nuggy, and frying ants with sunshine and a magnifying glass. Sy sold pea shooters for a nickel at the Ben Franklin and a kid could get a bag of navy beans at the IGA for a dime and a fingers-crossed pledged to the cashier that Mom was planning to make soup. The only trouble was that while a 10-inch plastic tube and bag of dried legumes made for fine armament of a summer afternoon, such weaponry was virtually impossible to conceal when classes convened come fall.

However, the plastic straw from an afterschool A&W shake would yield at least three easily concealable pipettes, which, when loaded with well-chewed wads of notebook paper, made Mrs. Hefte’s algebraic presentation far, far more entertaining.

But I guess times change. I checked out the Toys ‘R’ Us bankruptcy sale and there wasn’t a single pea shooter on discount. In school, boys shooting spitwads have been replaced by boys shooting bullets, and kale smoothies have nudged out the venerable chocolate malt.

And it looks like the uncollapsable, indestructible drinking straw is on its way out as well.

No doubt, civilization as we know it will continue, though slightly changed. We no longer take note that ashtrays aren’t a fixture on every bar and restaurant table, as they were 50 years past. We give no thought to buckling seat belts that weren’t even offered as an option on my dad’s first new automobile.

But how will we ever deal with an extra-thick malted if they ever outlaw long-handled plastic spoons?