Strawless summer in Ocean City? Environmental groups make big effort
Gray Hughes
Styrofoam containers and cigarette butts are common on Ocean City's beach, but groups are targeting another culprit this summer — the plastic drinking straw.
Beachgoers might see fewer straws around Maryland's top resort thanks to an initiative from the Ocean City Surfrider Foundation.
"Plastic straws are a problem that Surfrider has brought attention to worldwide," said Jane Robinson, chairwoman of the Ocean City chapter of the Surfrider Foundation. "There are some alternatives. Essentially, you can do without them a lot of time. There are those who need them, but (this is) to get people to think about it."
The Ocean City chapter pledged a "strawless summer" effort after finding out Americans use 500 million drinking straws every year, which is enough to fill 46,400 school buses every year, according to the National Park Service.
"There’s a lot of resort towns that have done this program," Robinson said. "One of the other execs and I went to a leadership conference in Charleston, and it is a huge tourist place, and their chapter was talking to us about the strawless summer. They said it really made an impact on the restaurants and the tourists."
Two Florida towns have already gone strawless.
Officials in Marco Island voted unanimously in March to prohibit businesses adjacent to city beaches from using plastic straws. Fort Myers passed an ordinance in November 2017 banning the distribution of plastic drinking straws with few exceptions.
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Organizers said Ocean City's mayor and Town Council are aware of the initiative.
Tony DeLuca, an Ocean City councilman, said members of the Surfrider Foundation have been invited to come to pitch the Strawless Summer initiative at the next meeting of the Green Team — a group whose goal is to protect the resources in the community.
Because straws and other items are too small for the beach cleaners to pick up, it makes it all the more important that people come out to clean up the beach, said DeLuca, who was out cleaning up the beach with volunteers this past weekend.
"From my perspective, I think the beach is very, very clean in Ocean City," DeLuca said. "I mean very clean. But what we do is peripheral stuff. It's really nice when you can get the crosswalks, the dunes, the jetties, all the nooks and crannies; that's what this group is really great at doing."
While a handful of restaurants have already signed on, Robinson said, they want as many restaurants as possible to make the pledge.
One issue is that there aren't enough volunteers to go out to each restaurant and pitch the strawless summer idea.
But that won't stop her.
"Mostly local restaurants are interested," she said. "Not really chains, but we are making headway with the local restaurants."
At least one local business has had success in reducing litter. The Salisbury Zoological Park has been both strawless and lidless for five years, said Mary Seemann, Salisbury Zoo marketing official.
And in celebration of Earth Day on April 22, the Salisbury Zoo will be pushing going strawless during the month of April.
The zoo has already highlighted businesses that are going strawless, sharing a post about Rise Up Coffee using paper straws instead of plastic.
"They (went strawless) before us if not at the same time," she said. "They didn't do it because of us, but it is cool to see other busiensses doing it. It’s cool to see a business like Rise Up where they use straws every day to take a step."
To help get the message out, Seemann says people should use the hashtag #PawsOffStraws.
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The zoo's posts about going strawless, though, won't be relegated just to the month of April. Seemann said they will also feature businesses intermittently throughout the year that go strawless by using the #PawsOffStraws hashtag.
"There are billions of plastics going into the ocean," she said, "which is why the Surfrider initiative is so important."
Beyond the plastic drinking straws, trash on the beach is a wider issue, said Effie Cox, a volunteer with the Adopt a Beach Program who was joined by members of the Maryland Coastal Bays and Ocean City Surf Club during the annual beach cleanup this past weekend.
"Once people get out there, they start emailing me, saying they never realized what was there because they walked past it and never really looked down," Cox said. "People are becoming aware of straws or cigarette butts, that they're more prevalent than they ever realize, so it's a whole educational side that has been awesome, too."
But until the amount of trash like straws on the beach is reduced, groups will continue to hold initiatives to clean up the beaches.
These beach cleanups are effective because they change the way people see trash, said Sandi Smith, development and marketing coordinator for Maryland Coastal Bays.
"Cleanups like this are really important because they give people an opportunity to see what is out there," she said. "There are also theories that once you start picking up trash, it changes your behavior pattern. When you tend to see it more, you pick it up more, whereas before when you participated in a trash pickup, you are kind of oblivious to it, so these events are very important."
Information from News-Press of Fort Myers, Florida, and Naples Daily News of Naples, Florida, was used in this report.
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