The Silicone Straw Company Ltd

Charlotte Walsh, Founder of The Silicone Straw Company, is on a mission to make it easier for families to live greener and save people from soggy paper straws!

Charlotte lives with her family in Grassington and along with the holidaymakers loves to spend sunny days down by the river with her children – picnicking and paddling. But sometimes the aftermath isn’t always so picturesque: Plastic bottles, coffee cups, sandwich wrappers and plastic straws wash downstream.

Seeing the impact single use plastics can have on the area got her thinking – how could she use her 15 years of manufacturing experience to make being green that little bit easier? So, she came up with a simple mission – to create convenient alternatives to single-use plastic items. The products are beautifully designed and made in the UK using the highest quality food-grade silicone.

For Charlotte, it is about creating products that allowed people to do the right thing without noticing and even better if the result was a better experience than people were used to

Charlotte’s favourite example is the McDonalds straw. In a desperate attempt to reduce their single use plastic footprint, McDonalds now use large paper straws. But McDonalds have forgotten the user experience. These straws feel funny on your tongue, they go soggy if they’re left in the drink too long and young children just chew the end of them.’

Charlotte thinks putting the user experience first will result in better quality sustainable products which will have a greater overall benefit for the planet in the long run. Taking this approach has served the Silicone Straw Company well.

The fledgling company has gone from strength to strength during the last 18months and has saved around 1 million single use straws from being sent to landfill illustrating the benefit of reuse over recycling. Every supply chain has an impact on the planet and small value items like this are often shipped half-way around the world to be used once and then thrown away. Buying something that can be used over and over again therefore multiplies the benefit many times over.