Edmonton pub ditching straws to reduce plastic waste

Sherlock Holmes Pub in the city is joining a worldwide campaign to reduce plastic waste.

Two weeks ago the establishment stopped serving straws in drinks at all five locations in Edmonton in hopes of keeping hundreds of thousands of plastic straws from reaching the landfill.

After a scuba diving experience in the Dominican earlier this year, Jordan Beatty the General Manager of Sherlock Holmes Pub downtown said it really opened his eyes to the problem with plastic waste.

"You got down about 3 metres and the floor was just littered with plastic bottles" Beatty told CTV. "We figured it takes about 200 years for a straw to break down so plastic bottles are even worse."

At the downtown location they said they used about 4,000 plastic straws a week.

"We have 5 locations in town," Beatty says, "so if you do the math on that it's about 20,000 straws a week and multiply that by 12 months that's hundreds of thousands of straws a year."

Many establishments across Canada are going straw-less including Workshop Eatery in Edmonton. While restaurants like Original Joes and Boston Pizza have switched to biodegradable straws.

Sherlock Holmes will still give straws to people who want them but once this supply of plastic straws is gone they'll have paper straws available on request.