Metal Straw – Germ Trap?

A word of advice to coffee shops and eateries….. if you are providing metal straws….. don’t put the straw in the drink!

Give your customers the option to choose to use, or not to use.

In public eateries and coffee shops I won’t use them!

And, just to set you straight, I am not a germaphobe by any means.  But these take me straight to nauseated.

Sure, they are a brilliant idea….

If you carry your own and are responsible for keeping them clean!

In this concern I find I am not alone.  More and more people that I am  in  public places with, where they provide metal straws in cooldrinks, are shuddering at the thought of what they might be harboring inside those long, skinny, bent steel pipes….germs and bacteria from inadequate cleaning?

When my drink arrives to the table with one of these shiny objects already standing in my drink I want to freak out!

Did the last person to use that straw have some awful bacterial or viral infection? Or maybe just bad mouth hygiene?

Cleaning these little suckers, pun intended, are a pain.  They need proper sterilisation and scrubbing with a tiny bottle brush. What if the cleaning process was rushed, or the washing water wasn’t clean or some of the straws were ‘missed’ in the process…?

Give me a paper straw wrapped in a sterile paper wrapper any day, even if they do go ‘soggy’ quite quickly.  It’s a much better option.

In fact, the other day, I was presented with a 100% biodegradable straw in a sterile paper wrapper, at the coffee shop at the Taham Art Gallery in Pietermaritzburg.  What a pleasant surprise!

How do you feel?