According to the "Opinions on Further Strengthening the Control of Plastic Pollution" previously issued by the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the use of non-biodegradable, single-use plastic straws will be banned from the restaurant industry nationwide by the end of 2020.

January 1, 2021 as the first day of the nationwide ban on plastic straws came into effect, many people have found that overnight all the plastic straws almost all turned into paper straws. According to CCTV reports, many large catering companies, including milk tea stores and coffee shops of all brands, have stopped providing disposable plastic straws, and most of them have replaced them with paper straws, and some have switched to polylactic acid biodegradable straws, and some of them have replaced them with lids of cups that can be consumed directly.

According to the situation reported by the Economic Observer, demand for paper straws is very strong around the world, and many downstream straw distributors have had to face a queue of orders, with some factories having orders lined up until April. However, some experts believe that paper straws are only a stopgap measure, significantly higher than the cost of disposable plastic straws will make many businesses can not afford, in the long term degradable plastics is the only way to deal with the ban.

Paper straw replacement is not sustainable

A large paper straw production company in Yiwu, Zhejiang Province, said that because Hainan has begun to implement the ban on plastic straws in December 2020, and now in the country's formal entry into force, in recent months, the factory received an explosive increase in the amount of orders received, the order has been lined up to April. Data show that in 2019, the national cumulative production of plastic products 81.84 million tons, of which, nearly 30,000 tons of plastic straws, or about 46 billion, this huge and short-lived market gap is temporarily filled by paper straws.

Many large food and beverage companies, including various brands of milk tea stores, coffee shops have stopped providing disposable plastic straws, most of which have been replaced by paper straws, and some have switched to polylactic acid biodegradable straws, and some have replaced them with cup lids.

Not only is the young people's favorite milk tea store, fast food restaurants, bakery coffee shops and other types of catering enterprises have also begun to use paper straws and PLA biodegradable straws.