The Last Straw: A&W Canada Celebrates Switch With Sculpture

If you want to see what it looks like for a major restaurant chain to swap out traditional plastic straws for the biodegradable paper variety, head to Toronto’s Union Station.

To officially announce the switch, A&W Canada unveiled a massive art installation made from the company’s stockpile of 140,000 remaining single-use orange straws, according to an article by Adweek. The 35-foot-long piece conveying “Change is good" was created by the appropriately-named advertising agency Rethink, reports the article.

“We wanted to create this sculpture to inspire people and businesses alike that small changes can have a big impact,” said CEO Susan Senecal, according to the article. With over 950 locations, the company is the first restaurant chain in North America to ban plastic straws, according to the article. The brand estimates this switch will keep 82 million plastic straws from heading to landfills or polluting bodies of water, according to the article.