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EDMONTON—It might suck to hear this, but paper straws are taking up just as much landfill space as the plastic ones they’re rapidly replacing.

Courtney Powell, founder of Elevated Enviro — an Edmonton business that helps companies reduce their costs by diverting waste — is urging restaurants to get compost bins so their disposable plant-based utensils can be put to good use.

“If those bamboo straws and paper straws are heading into the garbage like they likely are, because the majority of Edmonton restaurants only have a garbage bin and a cardboard bin, then it’s going to a landfill and it’s doing no different than what a plastic straw going to a landfill is,” Powell said.

When trash is dumped in a landfill, he said, a truck dumps gravel on the load, followed by another truck that dumps sand, and one more that dumps water.

This is done to maximize space in landfills, because municipalities increasingly don’t want garbage dumps in their backyards.

But it also removes the oxygen that would otherwise decompose things like paper straws and apple cores.

“No material really decomposes in a landfill because of that process,” Powell said.

“You could literally bite into an apple, throw it in a landfill, come back 50 years later and you’d still have that apple there because it just doesn’t decompose.”

Powell said based on his experience, he would guess less than 10 per cent of Edmonton restaurants have compost bins.

Most are managed by a property manager or property developer, so it would be up to them, and not the restaurant, to put one in place.

But Powell said there’s a strong business case for composting.

He said a restaurant the size of a Joey or a Local Public Eatery might toss five or six metric tonnes of food waste per month, at a cost of $100 to $180 per metric tonne, to be trucked to a landfill.

Some compost facilities, meanwhile, will take composting for as low as $65 per metric tonne.

“There’s not only this cost benefit of diverting waste, there is a strong environmental benefit, as well,” Powell said.

A paper straw, if it’s not thrown in the trash, will be usable for about two to three hours after being in liquid, and will fully decompose in a year or two.

By comparison, plastic straws take more than 200 years to decompose.

Part of the push to toss plastic straws came from new regulations China placed on recyclables this year.

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Most of North America’s recyclables go to Asian markets, and China used to accept a contamination rate on those items of up to seven per cent — from things like food, glue or waste residue.

Under the new rules, China will only accept up to 0.5 per cent contamination, which effectively rules out used plastic straws.

Fast-food chain A&W announced plans to cut out plastic straws by the end of the year, while Starbucks announced earlier this month that it will eliminate them from all its stores by 2020.

The owner of Greenmunch, a Sherwood Park company that makes paper straws, says demand has gone through the roof this spring since campaigns to eliminate plastic straws have caught fire.

Phillip Jacobsen said he will sell about four million paper straws this month, and could have sold 10 times more if he had enough stock to keep up with the demand.

Last July, by comparison, he sold about one million.

“We started to see a huge, huge demand in April, so we’re sort of still trying to ramp up production to keep up with the demand,” Jacobsen said.

“Pretty much the whole world is trying to get away from plastic straws right now.”

Jacobsen goes through a Chinese manufacturer to get straws, so his orders take about three months to fill.

Jacobsen has been in business for seven years, and said his clientele used to be primarily small, independent shops. Now, large chain businesses are jumping on board.

Some are eliminating plastic straws, but keeping a few paper straws on hand for customers who request them.

“Probably 99 per cent of our customers now are buying them because of the environmental aspect,” he said.

City council ordered administration in June to look into ways Edmontonians can cut back on single-use plastics.

Some cities, including Vancouver and Seattle, have made plans to ban plastic straws.

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