January 3, 2024 – Straws

Proving that there is a “national” holiday for just about everything, today is National Drinking Straw Day! It’s to commemorate the day in 1888 when the first drinking straw was patented.
Straws have been around for a surprisingly long time. The first known straws were made by the Sumerians and were used for drinking beer. The oldest straw in existence was found in a Sumerian tomb dating to 3000 BCE. It was a gold tube inlaid with the precious stone lapis lazuli. In the 1800s, straws were made from rye grass. However, these straws tended to turn to mush in liquid and gave drinks a grassy flavor.
One hot day in Washington, D.C., Marvin Stone was drinking a mint julep using a rye grass straw. He didn’t like the grassy taste the straw was giving his cocktail, so he came up with the idea of a paper straw. For his prototype, he wrapped a narrow strip of paper around a pencil and glued it together. He then experimented with manila paper coated with paraffin wax, resulting in a straw that wouldn’t get soggy with glue that wouldn’t dissolve in his bourbon. He patented his “artificial straw” on January 3, 1888. It quickly became all the rage, with 2 million paper straws produced daily at its peak.
Plastic straws became widespread after World War II. Half a century after Stone’s paper straw came the invention of the bendy straw, known in the biz as the “articulated straw”. It was invented by Joseph Friedman in 1937. He was sitting at the counter of his brother’s soda fountain in San Francisco with his young daughter and noticed she was having trouble reaching and drinking out of the straight straw. So he took a paper straw home and started experimenting. He put a screw into the paper straw and then wrapped dental floss around the grooves of the screw, resulting in an accordion-shaped ridge. After removing the screw, the paper straw could be bent over the edge of a glass, allowing small children to better reach their drinks.  He founded the Flex-Straw Company in 1939. His first sale wasn’t to a restaurant, but to a hospital, because nurses realized they could help bed-ridden patients drink while lying down.
Environmental concerns due to the impact plastic waste has had on the ocean have led to a rise in reusable straws. In 2018, Seattle became the first major city in the U.S. to ban plastic straws, followed by other towns and cities in California, New Jersey, Florida, and other states. Several eco-friendly alternatives have hit the market in recent years, including straws made from hay, bamboo, seaweed, and even pasta. Learn more here.