(Image source from: Concord Monitor)

Seattle, a city in Washington became the first major United States city on Sunday to ban drinking straws, an environmentally friendly decision that leaders anticipate will spark a countrywide conversation about small, everyday changes that people can make to defend the planet.

A decade ago, the city adopted an ordinance requiring that all one-time-use food-service items be compostable or recyclable, according to the report. But straws and other utensils were exempted from that law since there were not many good alternatives.

So the straws stayed, along with the environmental problems they cause.

According to the Strawless Ocean campaign, most plastic straws are not heavy enough to make it through industrial recycling sorters and can ruin an otherwise good load of recycling or they end up getting blown out of trash cans and car windows and in the end wind up in the oceans, where they can hurt wildlife.

Strawless Ocean approximates that 71 percent of seabirds and 30 percent of turtles have some kind of plastic in their stomachs. The organization says to take in plastic can cut the mortality rate of marine life by 50 percent.

Now customers at grocery stores, eating houses, food trucks, even institutional eating places have to find some other way to get fluid into their mouths. However, under the prohibition compostable paper and plastic straws are permitted. People who have a medical necessity to use a straw are excused.

If the rule has been disobeyed it may result in a $250 fine, although city leaders told that the initial phase of the law is more about raising awareness.

Across Seattle, 150 businesses participated in Strawless in Seattle in September, an effort to trim down the usage of plastic straws. In that month alone, Strawless Ocean estimates, 2.3 million plastic straws were distant from the city.

"When you get your iced latte, you’re going to get a straw. When you go get your mojito, you’re probably going to get a straw," Dune Ives, executive director of the Lonely Whale Foundation, which led the campaign, told media. "Once we start observing our daily life, it's really easy to see how quick" the plastic adds up.

The coffee company Starbucks in Seattle is as well making an endeavor to modify its straw-heavy business model by developing strawless lids.

By Sowmya Sangam