Ben & Jerry’s to Eliminate Plastic Straws and Spoons

Ben & Jerry’s is the latest company to join the movement to discontinue use of plastic straws.  This follows similar decisions by Disney, Starbucks, Royal Caribbean, the city of Seattle, and more.  Ben & Jerry’s reported that they currently use 30 million plastic spoons and 2.5 million plastic straws each year.  Concern over social responsibility is a growing trend and a great marketing tool for attracting employees and loyal customers.

Interestingly, if you want to talk about market research and validating secondary data, there’s another angle you can take on this story.  If you search the Internet to see how many straws are used by Americans each day one of the most frequent figures you’ll find is 500 million.  That statistic is quoted by National Geographic, government agencies, news networks, and more.  However, that statistic hasn’t been well authenticated.  This New York Times article covers the history of that statistic.  It originated in 2011 from a 9 year old boy named Milo Cress.  According to the NYT article, more rigorous studies suggest the number of straws is likely between 170-390 million.  It’s still a very large number but this helps illustrate the need to authenticate the actual source and validity of secondary data.