This Kid Single-Handedly Ignited the Plastic Straw Ban Movement

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Everyone Can Make a Difference –

July 24, 2018 – When Milo Cress was 9 years old, he was at a neighborhood cafe, Leunig’s Bistro and Cafe in Burlington, Vermont. He’d noticed that whenever he’d be at restaurants with his mom, Odale Cress, and order a drink, they automatically came with a plastic straw popped into them. To Milo, that was odd. “It seemed like a waste to me,” he told The Daily Beast. Why? Cress saw that a lot of patrons were like him—they’d take the straw out of the glass, setting it aside or throwing it away. And a lot of people who used straws didn’t really have to.

So Milo approached the owner of Leunig’s Bistro with a proposition: Would they be willing to offer straws (what he termed the “offer first policy”) before simply sticking them in drinks to help reduce waste? “It saved them money, it would be good for the environment, and there wouldn’t be so much waste,” Milo ticked off his arguments. “I was worried adults wouldn’t listen to me because I was kid … but I found the opposite to be true.”