Did you know a plastic drinking straw can take between 700 and several thousand years to break down? Neither did we until we started to think about it as we set up business on a pristine tropical island with no infrastructure for dealing with rubbish.
Here in The Craic House we make some of the tastiest fruit shakes around. People slurp them up with joy and the average shake last about 3 or 4 minutes. So a plastic straw does its work for 4 minutes only.
To get that straw to Malapascua requires transporting it from Cebu be vehicle using up plenty of diesel. Then it gets transferred onto a boat, diesel powered, and arrives here.
After its four minutes of glory the straw must then be transferred off the island by boat and driven to a land fill where it remains for 15 human generations or more. And that’s if the straw has been responsibly dealt with as is policy here in Evolution.
We do know that many straws do not find their way into appropriate places after use as people and businesses just throw them around the island. Research has shown that around 90{3c584785206271acba0b48c760be4725f0625fa591b4a52f771ab721d5a102df} of the rubbish floating in the Ocean is plastic with 100,000 marine mammals, turtles and more then a million sea birds dying from ingesting plastic each year.
In 2010 Evolution became the only resort on Malapascua to stop using straws completely and we have been straw free ever since. Yes it raises a few eyebrows as people try and get that last dollop of mango shake from the bottom of the glass but future generations and our oceans will benefit.
We also encourage all our guests to buy as few water bottles as possible and to refill the same one from our large container for just P15. Most guests consume a minimum of 2 litres a day so this has saved thousands and thousands of plastic water bottles from needing to by taken off the island over the last four years.
When you’re next visiting play your part. If you bring plastic bottles or containers onto the island be prepared to take them off. Did you squeeze the last of your sun lotion out? Store the bottle and dispose of it in Cebu or even at home. Small acts can make thousands of years of difference!
