Necessity was the mother of Chris Mueller’s invention. As the owner of Xtreme Juice, a Tampa-based juice and smoothie shop, Mueller was looking for single-use straws that were both environmentally friendly and durable enough to let customers slurp up frozen drinks. Paper straws wouldn’t cut it—they get flimsy too quickly—so Mueller decided to make straws out of polylactic acid, a biodegradable material made from things like cornstarch and sugarcane.
“Paper is not really an option for smoothies at this point,” Mueller said, describing how customers don’t like the taste and feel. “And there are other PLA straws on the market, but they don't have the diameter we need. Since I was going to make the straws for myself, I figured there's a lot of other people who would want to buy them.”
Mueller launched Turtle Buddy last year to capitalize on the lack of large-diameter, biodegradable straws on the market. He sells straws made of PLA and bamboo, which they source from China. The company’s name was inspired by a viral video of a sea turtle having a plastic straw extracted from its nostril.
Turtle Buddy currently distributes to about a dozen restaurants, shops and cafes. Most customers are mom-and-pop shops, Mueller said, since many chains can’t get permission from their franchisers to carry the straws.
Although biodegradable, PLA won’t break down without a little help. It takes three to six months at a composting facility for the straws to fully decompose.
Mueller claims Turtle Buddy straws aren’t just good for the environment—they’re good for business as well. They show a company cares about sustainability, while keeping costs down. Plastic straws cost about a penny each. Paper straws can cost upwards of eight cents a piece. Turtle Buddy charges a penny and a half per straw.
Over 500,000,000 plastic straws are used every day in the United States alone, according to the Plastic Pollution Coalition. Many of those straws end up in the ocean, inadvertently ingested by marine life or adding to massive garbage patches. To curb their use, states like California and cities like St. Petersburg have passed legislation to ban single-use plastic straws.
Xtreme Juice customers go through about 700 straws a day, said Mueller. That’s over a quarter-million straws a year. Mueller wouldn’t reveal exactly how many Turtle Buddy straws he’s currently selling but expects to distribute about a million this year. That’s a million single-use plastic straws that won’t end up in a landfill, the ocean or a turtle’s nose.
