Zero waste campaign wants to reduce distribution of straws at Sonoma County restaurants

Sonoma County waste reduction advocates want local restaurants to keep more trash away from the landfill by providing plastic straws only when customers ask for them, taking a page from the drought years when dining establishments adopted the same approach for glasses of water.

A new campaign called “Sip it Sonoma,” announced Thursday at an event in Rohnert Park, asks restaurants to implement a policy that straws are available only upon request and to list that policy on their menus or table tents.

The campaign also urges businesses to consider offering paper straws instead.

The goal is to encourage the county’s restaurants to take a small but visible step toward generating less trash.

The campaign was announced as part of a symposium educating the community about the concept of zero waste, which means discarded materials are prevented from ending up in landfills through a combination of aggressive recycling, reusing, composting and other strategies.

Leslie Lukacs, director of zero waste for SCS Engineers in Santa Rosa, told the audience gathered at the SOMO Village that she gets irritated when restaurants assume she wants a straw.

“We can drink beer, wine and so many things without a straw, but when you get to a restaurant, they want to put a straw in that water and want to put a straw in that Coke,” Lukacs said.

“Well, we don’t need it.”

Event attendees, who included representatives from various local governments, nonprofits and garbage haulers, were encouraged to pick up 10 business cards detailing the “Sip it Sonoma” campaign.

If they agreed to distribute the cards to different restaurants, attendees could receive a reusable metal straw in exchange.

At El Molcajete, a Mexican restaurant in Cloverdale that already received one of the cards, an employee said the business was planning to stop the practice of automatically distributing straws.

“It seemed like a great idea, so we decided that we’re definitely going to go with that,” said server Kevin Guerrero.

Advocates also plan to begin work on drafting a zero-waste ordinance that could be adopted by the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors and local city governments, Lukacs said.

You can reach Staff Writer J.D. Morris at 707-521-5337 or jd.morris@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @thejdmorris.