According to the National Park Service, Americans use 500 million plastic straws each day, which means that you’ll likely use over 35,000 of these little suckers in your lifetime. In fact, it’s their small size that makes them unrecyclable. The best case scenario is ending up in a landfill, where they take their slow, sweet time decomposing, which is sometimes centuries.

Worst case? Almost a third of all plastics produced escape collections systems and wind up in our oceans where they can be swallowed by our marine life and wind up in their stomachs or, as the world witnessed, their nose.

Together, we can help stem the tides that are washing up more and more plastic straws upon our shores. After all, St. Pete didn’t become the first “Green City” in Florida without reason. We made the commitment to completely transition to clean and renewable energy because our city is innovative, forward thinking, and understands the impact of the environment on our future.

The thousands of locals and tourists visiting St. Pete’s waterfront museums, attractions, and restaurants each year for our natural gifts are in danger of dwindling if we don’t tackle one of the biggest environmental hazards facing coastal communities like ours today: single use plastics.

We're asking people to take simple steps like:

• Pledge not to use straws
• Consider a reusable straw made of stainless steel, bamboo or glass to take with you everywhere
• Talk about it

And businesses to:

• Provide straws only when requested by a customer
• Provide either compostable or reusable straws when they ask for one
• Get rid of straws completely

Visit nostrawsstpete.com to join the effort.