When it comes to the environment, Rhode Island lawmakers collectively suffer from a weak constitution. Their eagerness to protect the natural world is as fragile as an Ocean State salt marsh. Something as useless and feeble as a plastic straw can break them, make them forget we are swimming in a sea of toxic polymers.

Rhode Island banned single-use plastic straws at restaurants four years ago. The straw ban is now on the precipice of being dumped. Last month senators — many of whom who had voted for the ban five years ago — unanimously passed a bill that would eviscerate the law that prohibits businesses from providing plastic straws unless a customer asks for one.

Having to ask for an item that can persist in the environment for two centuries or more is somehow bad for business. The local economy, apparently, will collapse if Rhode Island continues to prohibit businesses from providing an unnecessary expense to the public for free. An endless bounty of plastic straws represents freedom.

If passed by the House, S2639 would again let establishments put plastic straws in self-service dispensers for customers to help themselves to at will, which was a common practice before the ban went into effect in 2022.

State lawmakers prefer environmental legislation that isn’t enforced, supported, or even remembered. The Department of Health did its job too well. Changes must be made.

“Current food-service establishments are fined $25 every time they provide a straw without the customer asking, which is obviously bad for small business, bad for the hospitality industry,” Sen. Andrew Dimitri, D-Johnston, sponsor of the bill, said before the May 5 vote.

The Department of Health told The Providence Journal that its approach “has been to start with education for food businesses about this requirement. When we find a violation, we work with the food business owner to help them understand the new state policy. We would only resort to fining after exhausting the education avenue.”

Since 2023, the Department of Health has conducted some 27,000 inspections of food-service establishments and issued 586 plastic straw violations, including 329 in 2023 and 36 so far this year.

“This is an indication that our approach has been working, and that food businesses are increasingly coming into compliance,” Department of Health spokesperson Joseph Wendelken told The Providence Journal.

In Rhode Island, environmental progress has a way of retreating.

Stir-crazy Dimitri wasn’t in the Senate when the ban was passed in 2021, but 21 senators who voted for the ban then decided now is the time to significantly water it down — even as plastic pollution piles up. Some 33 billion pounds (16.5 million tons) of plastic enter the ocean annually.

The constitution of nearly two dozen lawmakers weakened by omnipresent Statehouse lobbyists.

Plastic straws are among the top 10 contributors to plastic marine debris across the globe. These petroleum-based items can sicken and kill seabirds, fish, sea turtles, manatees, dolphins, and other marine animals when they get lodged in their noses, throats, and stomachs.

Many of these blow-bubbles-into-whatever-you-are-drinking utensils are made from polystyrene (plastic foam) that contains styrene, a likely human carcinogen that has been linked to headaches, fatigue, and other health problems.

Our lawmakers are easily fatigued by actions meant to protect the environment and, thus, human health. They have a low resilience to lobbyist stress, which is why they are also considering rolling back the 2021 Act on Climate law; have failed to ban nips or enforce a 37-year-old law that likely does just that; and a bottle bill will remain a plastic pipe dream.

A 2025 report, commissioned by the General Assembly, recommended, after two years of study, that the state implement both a bottle bill and an extended producer responsibility program. Despite this report and its recommendations, the Department of Environmental Management is in the midst of its own bottle bill study. DEM director Terry Gray was on the commission that authored last year’s report.

Even if a bottle bill is approved this year (don’t bet on it), it would likely be trashed before the decade ended.

Frank Carini can be reached at [email protected]. His opinions don’t reflect those of ecoRI News.