A plastic straw produced will exist for the next 2000 years, and will likely end up in the ocean to be eaten by fish or birds, most of which we consume. Plastic straws are harmful to the environment and us. Using paper straws are a renewable way to consume our drinks in luxury the same way as a plastic straw, except you won't be filling the seas with more garbage. If we don't stop putting plastic into the ocean, we will not only continue to kill all the ecosystems that revolve around, we will also be slowly killing ourselves with the consumption of plastic. 

A direct way to tackle this issue is to pressure restaurants such as McDonald's to stop serving plastic straws to its costumers. A simple and non-violent way to force this is to boycott them until they switch to an alternative like paper straws. It may seem like something unnecessary for something so small, but switching so much as one item used as often as a straw to paper can go a very long way. 

If this would work, then we are one step closer to saving the ocean and ourselves.