About Us
Paper straws don’t have to suck!
How We Got Here
Here at Roc Paper Straws, we have so much love for this crazy world we live in and want to help turn the corner towards a more sustainable future. Preferably one that is free of icky, single-use plastics! This is the type of unnecessary waste that is yucking up our planet and can hopefully be eliminated, or at least replaced by more sustainable, eco-centric products.
For there to be a change towards this looming plastic waste problem, we need to work together; the businesses that produce these products and the consumers who buy them. If consumers continue to buy these harmful products, the companies will continue to produce them. If the companies continue to produce them, many customers will continue to buy them, especially if an alternative isn’t available. It’s a seemingly endless cycle, but we, at Roc Paper Straws, are determined to throw a wrench in this cog and stir things up a bit.
We take our mission very seriously and have worked diligently to make sure zero single-use plastics are used in our straw-making process and that all our materials come from eco-responsible sources.
Materials & Packaging
Our shipping boxes are the perfect size, so we do not need to use any unnecessary packing material. If we do have a box that needs a little extra cushion, we use our leftover paper scraps from our straw-making process. It’s a win-win!
Our product boxes are made from recycled material and can be placed in your recycle bin, along with your shipping box. We use kraft paper tape to seal our shipping boxes and the clear sticker we use to hold the product boxes closed is made from compostable material.
The company that provides our manufacturing paper is highly respected and follows strict forestry guidelines. The glues and oils we use in the making of our product are 100% food-grade. Even the oils we use in our machinery are food-grade quality. You can literally eat our straws for lunch, but I would recommend the salad instead.
The Short & Sweet
Karrie (the daughter of this mother/daughter operation) has owned and operated a local neighborhood bar for the past 19 years. (The place is called Lux Lounge and it is super cool, so check it out! – Lux666.com). Back in 2018, she made the switch to paper straws after watching the video of the poor turtle with the plastic straw in its sweet little nose. As Karrie watched, she exclaimed “Enough! No more turtle torture!” and made the switch to paper.
Then things got tricky. Apparently, other businesses were also making the switch and the demand started getting overwhelming. So overwhelming that the few US companies that were making paper straws couldn’t keep up. Karrie was literally waiting up to three months to get an order delivered. Then she thought to herself, “This is crazy! If people want the paper straws, they shall have the paper straws, so I will help save the world and make the paper straws!”
The Not So Short & Sweet
This mother/ daughter team, who have zero manufacturing experience and a giant dream, spent the next 3 years figuring it out. Researching and experimenting and buying weird machinery and trying to figure out how to run them and not being able to figure it out and then having to bring in much smarter machine-savvy people to actually get the cranky & complicated machines running and eventually spitting out pretty good straws and then deciding we can do better so we start over and get new products and make the machines better and start making super-duper amazing straws and then try and survive through a pandemic and refinance everything we each have to keep this crazy dream alive and then keep thinking that this is the day we can finally launch our incredible sucking straws, but then things keep going wrong or we need to buy more parts or realize we need another machine so we buy another machine, but it won’t be here for 6 weeks because everything is delayed and I mean every… single… thing. (Deep breath).
Then there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s actually a freight train heading full speed in our direction as there are more delays and roadblocks and hurdles to jump, but we keep jumping and hire a great little skeleton crew who are amazing and are helping us to finally reach our goal of helping the world to suck responsibly.
And here we are. Please buy our straws.
