Paper straws are better for the environment, but they will cost you

As more and more companies ditch plastic straws, food distributors are looking for environmentally-friendly alternatives. The most obvious choice is paper straws, but they are expected to cost substantially more.

“You’re looking at maybe ten times the cost,” Adam Merran, CEO of PacknWood, a food service products company, told CNBC on “Closing Bell” Monday.

“If you buy a paper straw, it’s about two cents and a half,” he said. Plastic straws cost about half a cent.

But Merran, whose company distributes paper straws —using recyclable and organic materials — to coffee shops, Las Vegas casinos and large stadiums like Madison Square Garden, said it’s all about perspective.

“You go from something that is very, very, very cheap, to something that is still actually cheap,” he said.

Starbucks was just one of many chains to recently announce that it would go withoutsingle-use plastic straws by 2020. Bon Appetit Management Company, a food service management company that services about 1,000 locations around the nation, also recently announced it would stop using plastic straws in facilities that it manages.

However, Starbucks, in lieu of paper straws — which many customers have complained lose their shape too fast — said it will replace plastic straws with a recyclable sippy cup-type lid.

“Any green solution is a solution,” Merran said.