As a part of their Earth Day celebrations on the 22nd
of April, Bandos Maldives has announced that they will be discontinuing the use
of single-use, plastic drinking straws, effective immediately. All drinks will
be served without straws, and if guests were to request a straw, biodegradable
straws will be used instead.
"… join with us in this worldwide movement and
commit to skipping the straw which is only a small step that will go a long way
in protecting our species," an announcement by the resort read.
"Thank
you for your cooperation in this initiative to save our environment."
This change is one of the latest
initiatives brought on by Bandos in order to reduce the impact they have on the
environment.
In addition to this, Bandos has
also introduced glass bottles to slowly phase out the usage of plastic water
bottles. Hence, guests are now offered water in a reusable glass bottle which
is filled with water produced form the islands own drinking water facility.
While plastic is one of the most defining
inventions of our time, its negative environmental impact is undeniable.
Globally, 300 million tons of plastic are produced on an annual basis and
around 8.8 million tons are dumped into the oceans.
The
throwaway nature of single-use, seemingly harmless plastic straws are actually
one of the top two polluters of the ocean, and each straw takes up to 500 years
to decompose. The total number of plastic straws used daily is so large that no
global usage figure exists, but Americans alone use 500 million straws daily,
according to the National Park Service.
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