We used to have an Aga great …always ready to cook .
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We bought two, one for me and one for the Mrs.
I swear it gives a slight metal taste to some drinks. She swears it doesn’t.
I clean mine after each use. I used one of those pipe cleaner looking tube cleaner things and soap. She didn’t and hers got nasty on the inside. Kind of a pain to keep clean.
We switched to glass straws. Easier to see if they are truly clean or not on the inside. But have to be careful about breaking them.
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I think I have come up with a solution to all of these problems: disposable plastic straws.
I’m a genius.
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You can make your own straws out of bamboo, it’s everywhere, just get some from the side of the road and chop it yourself. Re-usable and biodegradable.
I should do a little life-hack video…
So I went to McDonalds yesterday, and got the new and seemingly dreaded strawless drink cup. Unless you’re such a lazy sloth you can’t raise the cup to your lips, then it really isn’t a big deal. It takes all of 10 seconds to adjust.
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I am just waiting for a child to fall over while sucking on a metal straw, quite a high chance of pain and bleeding. Nobody seems to mention this.
Yes, designing reusable items is difficult from a hygiene perspective. Back home the supermarkets are starting trials to allow customers to supply their own containers for deli items such as potato salad etc. I can’t believe they are even trailing it due to the food safety issues.
Someone get’s sick, how do you prove it was the food or the customer supplied container?
Then get a rubber straw. Crisis averted.
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Reusable rubber straws would be neat, but:
a) Not ideal for piercing through the cover of a drink
c) Eventually someone will post the pic of a random moronic animal that somehow got a rubber straw stuck up his ass and the “My wildlife!11!” outrage would be back
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A straw is relatively easy . Try redesigning the toothbrush. That is a tough cookie I can tell you. The basic toothbrush has been working well for approx hundred years.
There are options that get you a good way to being environmental but a 100% biodegradable toothbrush is a really difficult objective to achieve whilst maintaining the functionality especially.
And you basically can’t go without using a toothbrush, or at least your options are very limited.
There is a massive amount of lies and misinformation in this whole environmental products space as somebody who has been involved in this I can tell you. It is not all the vendors fault, consumers expectations are often unrealistic.
For instance many people want to buy natural products, but don’t want to buy products that come from China , even though China has by far the best quality, price and most diverse natural product range worldwide. You wouldn’t believe the amount of fraud about the true origin of products in this space.
I’m also happy to talk about shoes if anybody is interested, you may all be bored already.
I’m sure you can add some implement or design to make this easy enough. If we can fly to the moon and put computers in our phones, then we can find a way to make that easier.
And it’d be ignored for being bullshit. Disposable plastic straws are a real, proven ecological hazard. Reusable rubber straws aren’t.
And where’s (b)? 
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It depends what rubber they are made from.
Which links to my shoes comment above .
You see rubber is a natural product (latex) which is chemically and physically modified to become stable in different environments and have varying functionality.
Mostly this seems to be achieved by adding carbon to it, the innovation that Dunlop came up with I believe. But many rubbers (teehee) on the market are synthetics or have a lot of synthetic compounds added . What we think of as rubber tyres are highly synthetic products loaded with plastic and metals too. They are a major contributor to environmental pollution and much of the dust in your house (especially if you live near a highway ) will be from these tyres and also brake pads.
But back to natural rubber…Or something close to it. Why not ? But I imagine it’s going to be a bugger to keep clean. It’s thermal stability will probably be poor meaning it could degrade rapidly . Hence folks choose steel and glass.
my point about those new lids is that it uses the same or more amount of plastic than the did…
I think I may have found the solution.
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Gravity!
Did someone say that drinking out of the new McDonalds cup was a big deal?
Question: in my days of youth, in the old country, we had paper straws. What happened to those? They supposedly should dissolve rather quickly.
There is a Taiwan company that sells natural plant fiber straws, heat resistant, very light. The factory is in Xindian. they produce both boba wide and tea thin ones.
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Remind me to put the new design for doggie´s toothbrush. Two circles surrounded by bristles. No more finger brushes.
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It doesn’t change the envronmental properties of the brush though. And for humans you’ve got to reach higher standards in terms of safety and sanitation.
From the McDonalds thread: