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TEWKSBURY — Anne-Marie Maguire was in Singapore when she first tried a wheat straw. Impressed by the straw’s feel and functionality compared to other plastic-alternative straws, Maguire wondered why she had not come across wheat straws in the U.S.

A light bulb went off in her head.

Maguire, a longtime Tewksbury resident, now owns and runs her own wheat-straw business. Called sWHEATie STRAWs, the business took Maguire three months to set up. She runs the business in her free time when she is not at her full-time job working as an executive assistant/office manager at a venture capitalist firm in Boston.

She calls sWHEATie STRAWs her side gig.

“Some people might take up knitting when they get home. I work on my side gig,” Maguire said.

Wheat straws are made using the stems of wheat plants that farmers don’t use, Maguire said. The trick is finding a type of wheat with the widest stem — sWHEATie STRAWs uses winter rye.

“It’s a nice solid stem and one of the most wide stems,” Maguire said.

To create sWHEATie STRAWs, the stems are hand-cut, triple-washed and laid to dry in the sun.

“The process is labor-intensive,” Maguire said.

The demanding process has been a deterrent for farmers in the United States.

In 2015, University of Maine Extension Specialist Ellen Mallory, a professor of sustainable agriculture, conducted a study with an entrepreneur who was also interested in wheat straws. Since then, Mallory has, from time to time, connected farmers with people, like Maguire, who are looking for wheat-straw sourcing.

On the whole, most farmers are not interested in entering the wheat-straw business, Mallory said. Those that are say they can grow the wheat for the straws but cannot process it.

“It is a bit of a leap then to go to production here because there’s growing the straw, but then what do you do with it, how do you handle it to turn it into a drinking straw?” Mallory said.

A smaller-scale niche farm might be better equipped and able to produce wheat straws, Mallory said.

Maguire sources sWHEATie STRAWs in Asia, where wheat straws are more common.

Though there is not much interest among farmers to enter the industry, Mallory thinks wheat straws are a good alternative to plastic straws.

“They’re a natural product,” she said. “I think consumers would like that.”

That is partly why Maguire sees wheat straws as the way forward.

Wheat straws are compostable and, unlike glass and metal straws, there is no concern about properly cleaning them after each use, Maguire said.

“Wheat is naturally water-resistant,” she added. “It feels way better on your lip.”

The straws are not edible, but they are gluten-free, Maguire said.

Though confident in her answer to the plastic straw, Maguire believes she is ahead of her time. This is because of general resistance to finding alternatives to plastic straws. As more communities begin to ban plastic straws, Maguire believes consumers will hop on the wheat-straw bandwagon.

“It’s going to come down to when that person someday goes to a grocery store and there are no plastic straws, or you go to a restaurant and there are no plastic straws,” Maguire said.

So far, most of Maguire’s sales have been to communities that have banned plastic straws. She focuses her marketing efforts there and has notifications set to alert her when a ban on plastic straws is mentioned in the news. Currently, she has her eye on New York and New Jersey.

The work is tiring but worth it for Maguire.

The impact of plastic pollution on wildlife is something Maguire became passionate about after traveling the world and seeing videos of its effect.

While banning plastic straws will not fix everything, according to Maguire, it will help.

“What it’s doing is really making people more aware of single-use plastic things and how do we eliminate them,” Maguire said.

Currently, sWHEATie STRAWs are available for sale on Amazon. Customers can purchase a package of 100 cocktail straws for $7 or a package of 100 tall straws for $8. For restaurants and anyone else looking to buy in bulk, sWHEATie STRAWs are also available in packages of 500.

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