According to www.strawlessocean.com, Americans use over 500 million straws every day, and most of those end up in our oceans, polluting the water and killing marine life. To help combat this problem, the City of Seattle has started a campaign, called Strawless In Seattle, to remove plastic straws from the waste stream. In addition to simply not using straws, they have identified a number of alternatives to plastic straws including straws made of paper, steel, glass, or bamboo, all of which are now commercially available.