This Vietnamese entrepreneur is making straws out of wild grass

A Vietnamese entrepreneur Tran Minh Tien is promoting an environmentally friendly way to sip drinks by using grass stems to make reusable, biodegradable straws. In pic: Tran Minh Tien, owner of 3T shop, collects grass to make straws at a field in Long An province, Vietnam. (Reuters)

Tien runs his company, 3T, from a village where wild gray sedge grass grows in swampland.(Reuters)

Tien said that he knows his straws will not be a permanent fix given the limited supplies of the grass in Vietnam, also the world’s fourth-largest contributor to marine plastic pollution. (Reuters)

Making these grass straws is a labour-intensive operation for which Tien has hired workers who pick the grass, cut it into uniform lengths and then clean straws before baking them in an oven or setting them out to dry in the sun for two or three days. (Reuters)

“Right from the start, I formed this idea around the fact that the harvesting can never exceed the grasses’ natural reproduction rate,” Tien told Reuters.

As demand has increased, Tien says he has to be careful about how fast he can expand his operation. (Reuters)

Tien started his business in 2017, and the company now produces about 3,000 straws a day, making a profit of USD 400 a month. These straws can be used for up to six months. (Reuters)