21 Aug 2018 --- The recent months have seen a string of food and beverage heavyweights declare war on single-use plastics – such as straws – with bold eradication targets. There are said to be 8.3 million straws littering our coastlines, but this number is rather small in the wider context of there being eight million metric tons of plastic in the oceans – of which straws account for only 0.03 percent, according to media outlet Bloomberg. How much of an impact will such bans have on the plastic waste problem?