Due to their small size and unique shape, plastic straws pose an issue for recycling and are often sent to the landfill or become litter in the environment.
Despite being included in the Government of Canada’s single-use plastic ban, straws continue to be found in the environment and are one of the top 10 most common items found in trash traps along the Toronto waterfront. Between 2021 and 2024, more than 2,207 straws were captured from Lake Ontario. If laid end to end, these straws would be equivalent to the length of about 16 blue whales, the largest animal on earth.
Project Overview
The aim of this project is to evaluate the landscape of single-use straws in Toronto in the wake of the federal single-use plastic ban. We will assess what is currently in use by foodservice businesses and document what is ending up as litter. We hope to use this information to better understand if the federal single-use plastic ban is having its intended effect to reduce plastic pollution, or if further education and policies are required.
In response to the federal single-use plastic ban, many businesses have pivoted to paper and other alternatives (e.g., made from bioplastic); however, the variability of these materials makes it unclear if these bioplastic products are a better alternative or whether they simply create a misleading image of sustainability. For example, while some bioplastic straws are labeled “BPI compostable,” in Toronto, waste management systems do not have industrial composting necessary to process them. Instead, this waste is routed to landfills where they do not experience the specific conditions required to break down the materials, and are thus just another plastic straw.
We plan to use straws as a case-study to evaluate responses from foodware industries to the federal single-use plastic ban and evaluate alternatives to petroleum-based single-use plastic items, in the context of Toronto’s waste management infrastructure.
This Project Aims to
- Evaluate if, and how, Toronto foodservice businesses have responded to the federal ban on single-use plastic straws and contextualize these findings with data about the quantities and types of single-use straw pollution in the aquatic and terrestrial environment in Toronto.
- Provide recommendations regarding plastic straw alternatives, including their environmental sustainability and alignment with municipal and federal goals to reduce plastic waste.
- Develop a spectral library for scientists to better identify bioplastics, a commonly used alternative, in environmental samples of plastic and microplastic pollution.
Results:
Objective 1: Evaluate impacts of the single-use plastic straw ban
- 48% of foodservice businesses are not following the single-use plastics ban.
- More than half of the straws removed from Lake Ontario by the U of T Trash Team since 2021 were collected in 2025.
- Cleanup data indicates that the quantity of single-use straws collected in 2025 has gone up compared to previous years, including since 2024.
Objective 2: Provide policy recommendations
- Enforcement of the current ban of single-use plastic straws.
- Education for customers and foodservice businesses about current legislation for single-use plastics in Canada.
- Regulations regarding labelling of bioplastics to better inform consumers and foodservice businesses about what should be done with them at the end of their life.
- Provide financial incentives to customers and foodservice businesses encouraging them to adopt sustainable replacements for plastic straws (e.g., using lids that do not require a straw, customers bring their own reusable straw or offering reusable straws for dine-in settings).
- Conduct surveys of foodservice businesses across Canada to monitor long-term changes following the ban.
Objective 3: Develop a spectral library to identify bioplastics
To improve the ability to detect bioplastics in environmental samples we developed an open-access spectral library of bioplastics. This will be an open-access tool available in early 2026.
What are Bioplastics?
This project is led by Madeleine Milne, a master’s student at the University of Manitoba. Passionate about plastic and microplastic pollution, she has worked on a variety of projects attempting to better understand and address this problem. In addition to being a 2025 Pollution Prevention Project Fellow, she is currently conducting research for her MSc. to better understand how microplastics impact the animals in freshwater lakes as part of a whole-lake manipulation experiment at the IISD-ELA in Northwestern Ontario.
For more information, please email Madeleine Milne or Chelsea Rochman.
This project is supported by Community Matters Toronto.
