Plastic pollution is the last straw

I took a sundown stroll along the beach in Bloubergstrand, Cape Town.

The sea mist had rolled in, bringing drizzle, chasing away people, and it was just me and all that soft sand.

And all those straws. I stepped onto the beach and the first thing I saw was a plastic straw sticking out of the sand, like a tiny barricade at turtle D-Day.

I pulled it out, but there was another, and another, often angled upwards at 450 where the incoming waves had planted them, so many miniature javelins pointing out to the sea.

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I spent an hour walking that beach, picking up straws as I found them: 78 complete plastic straws, and 17 other sections of straw bigger than 5cm.

There was even one still in plastic packaging. I also picked up two large cooldrink bottles, a few crisp packets and several small yoghurt pots.

Then there was the stuff I didn’t pick up because I only have two hands: I was carrying my shoes too, and I draw the line at condoms.

There were cigarette butts, bottle caps, juice cartons, plastic cutlery, bags and endless sharp blue cotton bud sticks, presumably flushed away at home, a reminder that not only do 11 million metric tons of plastic get dumped into the ocean every year, but so does whatever goes down the loo.

But here’s the irony: we had a family day at the aquarium earlier that day, my grandson’s first visit to see Nemo and baby sharks, and to learn about the plastic threat – 70% of plastic in the ocean is of the single-use variety.

Afterwards, we went to the restaurant overlooking the seal platform, with its sign about notifying staff if we saw a seal tangled in plastic.

There’s even a detangling station. Then our drinks arrived… with plastic straws.

Sorry, but hadn’t we just been learning about what plastics were doing to the ocean and marine life?

To us? So how about only serving straws on request? Or just not having the wretched things to hand out in the first place?

Sure, the paper wrapping said “Refuse the Straw” and I tried to send them back, but four people in my party of nine opted to use theirs.

Sorry, turtles. Sorry, world.