Remember the straw that broke the camel’s back? This was that straw: the viral video of a plastic straw being removed from a sea turtle’s nostril. Turtle blood shocked everyone.

Here it is if you can stomach it.

The movement to oust plastic straws has spread across the countryβ€”from Miami Beach, where straws are now banned, to Malibu, where the prohibition also extends to single-use plastic utensils and stirrers. Now it’s reached Salt Lake.

Strawless in SLCβ€”an intiative started by Laura Bellefontaine as a brainchild of the group SLC Air Protectorsβ€”has convinced more than 100 restaurants and bars to stop using plastic straws.

Want some stats? 80-90 percent of marine debris is made from plastic. In the U.S., we use 500 million straws per dayβ€”enough in a year to wrap the circumference of the earth 2.5 times, or to fill Yankee Stadium more than nine times. Plastic does not biodegrade; it photo degrades into smaller and smaller pieces, which are then ingested by marine and land animalsβ€”and even make their way into the human food chain. facebook.com/strawlessinslc

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