Drinking straws are a popular utensil and should not be missing at any party or children's birthday party. Even in bars or restaurants, the idea of ​​serving drinks without the practical straw is almost utopian. Unfortunately, this above-average consumption of drinking straws has hardly any positive effects, especially not for our environment. Around three billion plastic straws end up in the trash every day after only a short period of use. For this reason, more and more people are looking for alternatives to disposable straws - and with great success!

drinking straws made of pasta dough

The use of plastic straws is becoming more and more worrying. It is a real waste to throw these straws away after just a few minutes. Although drinking straws only make up a small part of plastic waste, the consequences for our environment are still serious.

One thing is certain: we need healthier alternatives for our environment. A baker from Bielefeld has already taken the first step towards this - drinking straws made from pasta dough. According to the baker, the homemade drinking straws are extremely popular with his customers. We naturally want to follow up on this and start our exciting drinking noodle test.

We started looking for this and soon found what we were looking for: drinking straws made from macaroni seem to be the future alternative to plastic. You can find them either in the pasta section of a local supermarket or at the bakery mentioned above in Bielefeld. 

Hans-Martin Rolf, a passionate baker, doesn't use anything special for his creation, just classic ingredients: water, salt, egg yolk, a few drops of oil and durum wheat flour are on the baker's list. Rolf received a lot of positive feedback for his efforts and, contrary to our expectations, the new drinking straws don't look too bad at all.

Don't soak it

Whether it's a noodle straw from the supermarket or from Hans-Martin Rolf, we want to get to the bottom of the matter. What is behind these drinking noodles and could they really be used as an alternative one day? We carried out the following test:

For this experiment we only needed two glasses. We filled one with water and the other with cola. We then put a macaroni into each glass as a drinking straw. After about an hour we looked at the result. It looked anything but appetizing, but macaroni would be an interesting alternative, as we generally drink our drinks more quickly. In other words, the macaroni drinking straws wouldn't dissolve anyway.

Plastic straws soon to be history?

Sooner or later, one day all plastic products will disappear - this is especially true for single-use straws. The UK and the EU are already working on a solution to this serious problem. 

The results are already visible in some areas: Companies such as Rewe and Penny have already largely removed their plastic straws from their range. They are followed by Kaufland and Lidl, who want to have the product out of their stores by the end of 2019. However, more companies will also decide to do so in the future - even McDonald's and Starbucks want to do without the unnecessary plastic soon.

Unfortunately, stopping single-use straws does not immediately mean that all of the world's plastic problems have been solved. Despite everything, the EU Commission says it is an acceptable step in the right direction to show that it is really possible to curb plastic waste.