[ruby_title]Morning glory straws at Broccoli Revolution, Bangkok[/ruby_title]
At vegetarian restaurant Broccoli Revolution in Bangkok, customers are given the option of having a plastic, a natural or no straw when they order a cold-pressed juice.
Asking for the natural option gets them a bright green stem of morning glory in their drink. Over 1,000 species of the plant grows all across the world, but here they use the locally available water spinach variety, commonly used in dishes like the pad pak boong, for its sturdy, hollow stems. “We discussed possibly getting rid of straws altogether, then one of our staff members suggested that the morning glory might work due to its size, flexibility and cost-effectiveness,” says Broccoli Revolution’s chief financial officer Saks Rouypirom. The straws are trimmed, cleaned and prepared daily, and the restaurant’s learned that they last for about three days on average. “The morning glory straws are quite flavourless – even if they have some flavour when chewed on, they work well with our juices,” notes Rouypirom.
Besides the durability of paper straws, which they found broke down easily in their juices “probably due to acidity”, the expense of buying glass and aluminium also had to be taken into consideration. “A big concern was also sanitation, since washing them has to be quite thorough,” says Rouypirom. “With our Thai customers, there’s still a little bit of confusion, but we’re slowly building awareness with our community of the importance of reducing the large amount of plastic waste in Thailand and our neighbouring countries.”
