McDonald's sells a plastic straw for 45,000 yuan?! McDonald's fans: It's taken, it's worth it!

Today I saw a very interesting topic on Weibo:

Emmmm... 45000 yuan for a plastic straw?! What is this straw?

In 2019, Starbucks launched a limited version of the straw, which costs as much as 228 yuan! After some understanding, it turns out that the body of Starbucks straw is made of stainless steel titanium alloy, with Starbucks logo protective leather case, and black, silver, rose gold three colors to choose from, but this straw nearly 200price also let many netizens shout helplessness.

However, compared with the $45000 price tag for a plastic straw at McDonald's, the 200th straw from Starbucks is negligible in price.

A straw is as high as 45000. What exactly is McDonald's selling?

As early as September 2018, McDonald's banned the use of plastic straws in stores around the world and switched to paper straws. Plastic straws have become out of print, according to the Mirror, quoted by the World wide Web. Recently, many stores have sold these out-of-print McDonald's plastic straws online, with a straw priced as high as 5000 pounds (about 45000 yuan). Sure enough, scarcity is precious.

Unimaginably, one of the online stores with a price tag of 4500 pounds sold it and sold three of them.

McDonald's fans also said that it is cost-effective to buy a "brand new, unused and undamaged" plastic straw at this price.

Since 2018, two beverage giants, McDonald's and Starbucks, have announced that they will eliminate plastic straws and vigorously promote biodegradable paper straws. In 2018, McDonald's in the UK gradually replaced plastic straws with biodegradable paper straws, but it was boycotted. In September of the same year, McDonald's banned the use of plastic straws in stores around the world and switched to paper straws. At that time, McDonald's China tested the "straw-free cup lid" and did not provide straws on a pilot basis in 10 restaurants in Beijing to encourage consumers to reduce the use of straws.

According to statistics, British stores use 1.8 million plastic straws every day, resulting in a large amount of plastic waste that is difficult to degrade. In China, according to statistics, the total output of plastic products in 2019 is 81.84 million tons, of which nearly 30 million tons are plastic straws, or about 46 billion. The per capita use is more than 30.

In response to the theme of environmental protection, many restaurants have launched paper straws instead of plastic straws since 2020. McDonald's China entered the hot search list on June 30, 2020. McDonald's China announced that it will further reduce the use of plastic straws in food packaging and stop using plastic straws, and a new cup lid is available for drinking Coke in McDonald's China.

At the beginning of 2020, the state issued the "opinions on further strengthening the treatment of plastic pollution". By the end of 2020, the national ban on plastic straws has come into effect, and the use of non-degradable disposable plastic straws has been completely suspended. After the ban on plastic straws, there is a strong demand for paper straws, paper straws are in short supply, some straw dealers are facing order queues, and some factory orders are even arranged in April.

At present, there are mainly two kinds of biodegradable straws widely promoted in the market, one is paper straw, the other is polylactic acid degradable straw. In the production process, this kind of polylactic acid degradable straw is made from corn, sugar cane and other crops as raw materials. compared with plastic straws, polylactic acid degradable straws can be degraded in only 90 days under the condition of composting. The use time of plastic straw is only a few minutes, but the time of degradation may be as long as 500 years. In terms of price, the cost of this kind of degradable straw is three to five times higher than that of plastic straw. CCTV Finance has said that the cost of a ton of disposable plastic straws is about 8000 yuan, while that of a ton of paper straws is nearly 22000 yuan.

Nowadays, green environmental protection has become a major trend. the implementation of new types of straws reduces the use of plastic straws to a certain extent. from the point of view of environmental protection, providing paper straws is also one of the good ways to promote consumers to change their habits and producers to reduce production. however, some netizens said: paper straws are generally practical, and the degree of environmental protection is only slightly better than plastic straws. Netizens even said that beverage stores have changed paper straws. As the paper straw is easy to soften in the process of use, which affects the taste of the drink.

* Image source: Internet