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Friday, April 9, 2010

Stainless Steel Straws

I feel like I am playing catch up today with blogging and everything else in my life... This is something I have been meening to post for over a month now.

One thing C Monster loves is a straw; he will drink almost anything if he has a straw.  Plastic straws are typically made from polypropylene; are not recyclable or biodegradable so they just end up filling up the landfills one by one.  Yes there are biodegradable straws available but the city of Toronto is not equipped for them and you can not put them in your green bin they go to the dump; unless you want to beery them in your back yard so they can properly biodegrade. 

When I found these metal straws at Parenting by Nature I was all over them.  We have been using them for a few months now and love them.  I recommend finding a tiny straw brush to wash them as it is hard to get juice gunk out of them.  Also acid can corrode metal so it is good to at least rinse them if you are not going to wash the straw right after using it.  We now have 4 long ones and 4 short ones more then enough for a family of 3.

Another alternative to metal is glass but with a 2 year that just did not seem safe to me.

5 comments:

LaurieB said...

I just received my order of the short stainless steel straws from Parenting by Nature today and they are the perfect size for Ella's cups. I had heard about these straws several months ago but the seller was a U.S. website and I couldn't track the straws down locally (I tried Grassroots, The Big Carrot, Treasure Island, etc.) so thanks so much for the link to a Canadian online store that sells them. Ella, too, loves to drink from straws, and I will feel much better about not throwing 3+ straws in the garbage every day. Thanks again!

Pierrette said...

Glade to hear I was able to be of help :-)

hope all is well with you guys..

LaurieB said...

All is well. Baby is due in 4 weeks and so far (knock on wood/fingers crossed/etc) my health has been excellent. By the way, I meant to ask in my previous comment, where can I buy a little brush to clean the straws in the event they get gunked up?

Pierrette said...

We use a cleaning brush that we got with Geoff's CamelBak - I think you can get the cleaning kit anywhere's that sells CamelBak - here is a link to it.

http://www.basspro.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_10151_-1_10001_66897_325006002_325000000_325006000?cmCat=CROSSSELL_SEARCH

I do not know if you can buy just the brush.

Geoffrey Wiseman said...

The brush we're using is the one I got with my Camelbak cycling water backpack. It's pretty ideal, but I can't recommend that you buy a camelbak just to get a brush. ;)

You basically just need to find a decent supply of tube or bristle brushes (e.g. http://www.solobrushes.com/WebCatg2.asp?Cat1ID=4&Cat2ID=6) -- maybe a hardware store?