FoodPasta Straws Are Popping Up as an Edible Alternative to Plastic

Plastic straws have a bad rap, but it's for a good reason. Disposable straws made from plastic don't decompose easily and with eight million metric tons of plastic ending up in the ocean each year, anything we can remove from that pile (including, let's be fair, the plastic cups and lids those straws often come with) is a move in the right direction. So far we've seen a few alternatives floated out there, from reusable metal straws to compostable options made from paper, grass, bamboo, or corn-based materials. But a couple of companies have popped up with a different, edible option to replace plastic straws: Pasta.

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Straw By Straw 's straws are organically grown, and the perfect accompaniment to retro drinks of all shapes and sizes. Biodegradable plastic . Recently funded on Kickstarter are a new range of straws that promise to be flavoured, edible and, apparently, as biodegradable as banana peel.

This includes plastic straws , which take up around 4% of the world’s plastic pollution. People around the world are using alternatives to plastic such as bamboo, glass, and, in Italy isn’t the only place to adopt the pasta straw though—a London-based company called Stroodles produces edible

© Stroodles

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Both London-based Stroodles and Malibu-based The Amazing Pasta Straw have been selling their wares for over a year. The straws are, well, basically bucatini — straight, tubular lengths of uncooked noodles. But while they're all made in Italy from the same semolina as the pasta you'd put on your plate, these straws are a little heartier than the average macaroni. Stroodles founder Maxim Gelmann even mentioned that people can drum with them without breaking (so dads everywhere can keep up their usual embarrassing restaurant antics). Stroodles are being trialed in some U.K. restaurants and bars while The Amazing Pasta Straw company, founded by Bob Morris, a restaurateur who has operated Gladstones and Paradise Cove in Malibu, has put the straws into circulation at various restaurants.

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Straws made from sugar, wheat, bamboo and pasta are vying to replace the now-reviled plastic ones. Crafted out of uncooked egg-free pasta it is , as a drinking aid, hard to fault – at the risk of #accidentalpartridgeing, this bad boy still performed after nearly an hour spent dunked under a

Meanwhile, a pasta straw won’t get mushy in a cold drink (although it will soften up after about an hour). The companies also like to point out that the straws are edible , although that seems like a stretch, since crunching down on hard pasta is not many people’s idea of a good time. Yet they’re still

© Provided by TIME Inc. Stroodles

Okay, to answer your burning question: Both brands claim their products are tasteless while in your (cold) beverage, as they're just made of wheat and water. According to the Stroodles website, the straws last roughly an hour before softening up (on par with, if not better than, some paper), after which they can be composted or even consumed. Of course, we've never tried boiling our pasta after dipping in Diet Coke, but there's a first time for everything. (If you can cook pasta in red wine, why not?) In the end, it's not all that different than biting the ends off of Red Vine licorice sticks to slurp your drink. Gelmann says some bartenders even include them in drinks like Bloody Marys, specifically because they act as a practical, edible garnish.

Oh, and to answer your other burning question, no, they're not gluten-free. But they are vegan.

Stroodles sells its straws in Europe, while The Amazing Pasta Straw only comes in quantities over 1,000 (though they are available on Amazon), however yet even more companies are selling similar products online.