AUSTIN -- Stubb's, one of Austin’s iconic barbecue and music venues, revealed in a tweet their plans to stop using plastic straws.
The venue pledged to put away the plastic effective immediately, tweeting, “Americans use approximately 500 million straws daily. That's enough straws to circle the earth 2.5x.”
Known for their live music and cold beer, Stubb’s asked their visitors to join them in the fight to end pollution by “saying ‘no’ to plastic drinking straws.” A spokesperson for the restaurant told KVUE it was "environmentally the right thing to do."
Some of Stubb’s followers were thrilled by the change, one user responded with a tweet saying “other places should follow in your footsteps.”
Other users suggested using reusable straws, such as ones made out of stainless steel, or other substitutes such as biodegradable ones.
Luke Metzger with Environment Texas applauds the decision. He said straws are damaging to the environment just like other forms of plastic and the problem is they end up in a lot of places they're not supposed to be.
"When we do clean ups we find plastic pollution in our creeks in our parks, all around the city, in trees sometimes and they can find their ways in popular waterways like Lady Bird Lake, Lake Austin and that's both ugly but it can also harm wildlife," said Metzger.
While the city of Austin doesn't have a ban on plastic straws, several other cities across the country including Malibu, Calif., Seattle, San Luis Obispo, Calif., and Fort Myers, Fla. have already eliminated the drinking utensils, according to the New York Times.
The New York Times reports that there is a global movement to gain control over the environmental impact of plastics, which aren't biodegradable and have been unloading into the world's oceans for decades.