Naperville teens Milo Weese and Madie Weir asked the Naperville City Council this week to join the growing number of cities that have banned food service businesses from providing single-use plastic straws to customers.
The two 17-year-olds who attend Naperville North High School said switching to compostable paper straws could change the city’s quality of life and would be the first step toward eliminating single-use plastics from the city.
Their campaign to eliminate plastics straws started after recognizing an issue downtown, they said.
Weir said her favorite activity in the summer is to grab an iced coffee and stroll the Riverwalk, where she observed plastic trash along the pathway. She realized she was contributing to the problem, she said, and brainstormed solutions with Weese.
For the past month, the pair has been bringing bundles of paper straws to 100 restaurants in the city with a message to stop using plastic, they said.
The vast majority of restaurants have been very supportive of the idea, Weir said. “In fact, some of them even wanted to create partnerships with us to make the change to paper,” she said.
While no business opposed making the switch, Weese said it understandably is not a high priority.
“This is where we hope that our City Council can help, so we’re respectfully asking that Naperville City Council pass an ordinance to discourage the use of plastic straws,” he said.
Weir urged Naperville to join Seattle; Washington, D.C.; New York City; Miami Beach; Charleston, South Carolina; and several major cities in California that have prohibited the use of plastic straws.
India banned a variety of single-use plastics, including straws, in July and Canada is phasing them out by the end of the year.
“We know that if this change was established in Naperville, it would improve the quality of life here and make an impact beyond our city,” Weir said.
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