UPDATE - on 19/07/2018, McDonalds Australia announced it would remove plastic straws from its 970 Australian restaurants by 2020. But I think that is too long to wait.

McDonalds Australia - Please transition to paper straws now! 

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Please help me encourage McDonald's Australia to replace their single-use plastic straws with paper straws.

My name is Molly Steer and I am 10 years old, and I love eating Maccas!
But I live in Cairns, home of the Great Barrier Reef, and I also really love this natural wonder and the beautiful marine animals that inhabit it.   

So please, let me tell you why I think Plastic Straws Really Do Suck.

* Did you know that Australians use an estimated 10 million straws every single day?  If you lined these straws up, end to end, they would stretch from Cairns to Melbourne. That's every single day!
* Did you know that single-use plastic straws cannot biodegrade? Instead, they break up into smaller bits of microplastic.  And because they are so lightweight, they are not able to be recycled and often end up in our waterways, affecting the marine life.  
* Did you know that one garbage truck full of plastic waste is dumped into oceans around the world every minute?  That's 1440 dump trucks EVERY SINGLE DAY!
* Did you know that plastic pollution increases the risk of disease in reef corals. Plastic is literally killing the Great Barrier Reef. 

Those facts are pretty shocking, aren't they?

When I first saw the video of a turtle with a plastic straw stuck in its nostril it made me cry.  We all know that plastic waste is a problem, but never had it been so obvious than when that video went viral.

Humans created this problem, and nature is suffering.  It simply isn't fair. 

Marine experts say that unless we radically change our behaviour around plastic waste -  a large majority of which is made up up single-use straws - by 2050 there will be more plastic in our oceans than fish. 

I knew I couldn't sit back and let this happen.

In April 2017, I started the Straw No More Project. 
In the past year, more than 260 Australian schools with more than 110,000 students, as well as thousands of businesses and individuals have taken the Straw No More Project's pledge to stop using single-use plastic straws.

In April 2018, I convinced the Cairns Regional Council to cease using plastic straws and other single-use plastics in their daily operations and events. 
Two weeks later, Moreton Bay Shire Council did the same thing.

Coles and Woolworths have also said they will stop selling plastic straws in their supermarkets.  The world is becoming aware of the dangers of this single-use product.

I'm working tirelessly to raise awareness about the dangers of single-use plastic straws. 
But I know this isn't enough.  I need help.  I need Macca's help!

McDonald's in the UK and Ireland have recently changed their plastic straws to paper, and the public is delighted with this progressive move!

So now, I'm calling on Macca's, as leaders of the Australian restaurant industry with nearly 1000 locations across the country, to join me in protecting the Great Barrier Reef, by using eco-friendly paper straws in all its Australian restaurants.