This past week....on a rare German 'outing' (in these harsh Covid times), I ventured into my local town, and stopped for an ice tea. I won't give you the name of the commercial operation...it's just safe to assume that 99-percent of you have heard of them.
So if you've followed German hype over the past five years....Germans are extremely concerned over plastic. In the past year or two...just about everyone...from coffee shops to bakeries...to grocery stores....are trying to lessen plastic usage.
My ice tea came with a paper-straw (not the typical plastic one). Yes, wrapped up in a paper envelope.....I spent ten seconds opening this envelope and out came the straw.
Jabbing it into the plastic top? That basically came to destroy the fragile stability of the straw and the 'crappy' straw from that point on....was useless.
I stood there on the street...having paid around 3.90 Euro for the ice tea, and felt kinda peeved over the straw business.
Getting a Chinese plastic straw? Yes, I can go and order the 100-pack for around 2.99 Euro (from Amazon). I feel silly doing this and lugging one around with me for these ventures into the city, but basically....they've all gone to paper straws to comfort the poor Germans and their plastic anxiety business.
Its one of those odd changes in German culture that you have to live with, or defeat without saying much.
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