#HTE

FinalStraw: This Folding Metal Straw is Killing It on Kickstarter!

I understand that you don’t want your smoothie messing up your moustache, but plastic drinking straws are stupid. They’re not recyclable, and it’s absurd to use something once that then gets thrown away. Drinking straws are easily carried off of garbage piles by the wind, so it’s no surprise that they wind up in the ocean, where aquatic creatures choke on them.

The UK is mulling a plastic straw ban; one estimate has them responsible for placing 8.5 billion straws in the trash each year. The U.S. is of course far worse–we go through 500 million straws a day–and thankfully U.S. cities like Seattle, Miami and Malibu are banning restaurants from distributing them.

Then there’s FinalStraw, a folding, cleanable metal straw that might sound like a silly product design, but which has far-reaching potential:

Incredibly, and hearteningly, at press time FinalStraw had netted $433,823 in pledges on a piddling $12,500 goal! And there’s still 25 days left in the campaign.