The Resorts World Sentosa casino resort in Singapore says it is no longer giving customers plastic drinking straws as part of an effort to protect the natural environment from pollution. The Genting Singapore Ltd resort issued a statement on Monday saying it stopped providing plastic straws at the beginning of October in five of its themed attractions, including Universal Studios Singapore and the S.E.A. Aquarium, and in eateries such as restaurants run by celebrity chefs and food outlets in Malaysian Food Street. The firm says this means that each year over 3 million plastic straws, together weighing about 1.2 tonnes, will no longer be thrown away. Customers that ask for drinking straws will be given more easily biodegradable paper straws, Resorts World Sentosa said.
Resorts World Sentosa is following a trend towards greater conservation efforts in casino resorts elsewhere in Asia. Macau casino operator MGM China Holdings Ltd announced last month that it would cease using throwaway plastic products used to store takeaway food and drinking straws in its efforts to reduce pollution of the environment. The company estimates that this will prevent more than 860,000 plastic straws and more than 470,000 plastic containers for take-out food from being added each year to the burden of waste borne by the environment.
The U.S.-parent company of MGM China, MGM Resorts International, said in July that it would give single-use plastic straws to customers of its restaurants in the United States only if they asked for them. Also in Macau, the JW Marriott Hotel Macau and The Ritz-Carlton, Macau have announced that they, too, will do without disposable plastic drinking straws and plastic stirrers. Both hotels are part of the Galaxy Macau casino resort, which belongs to Galaxy Entertainment Group Ltd. The Marriott International hotel chain intends to stop giving its patrons plastic straws in more than 6,500 of the establishments it runs by next July.
