A cafe owner in Siargao island has made an environmental stride by using eco-friendly “lukay” straws as an alternative to plastic straws. Lukay is the local term for palm leaves or coconut fronds.

The cafe owner’s shift to the environment-friendly practice is in line with the global effort to end plastic pollution, a problem that has extended to the oceans and marine life.

Sarah Tiu, 37, manager of Cafe Editha in Dapa, Surigao del Norte, told INQUIRER.net that she decided to use lukay drinking straws after a tour with her family to Corregidor island in Siargao.

“We bought fresh buko and they just cut lukay, then made it into straws. So we asked them to teach us [because] we were very impressed with the idea,” Tiu added.

As she always wanted to eradicate the use of plastics in her resto, she recounted using different substitutes to plastic straws.

“We tried using stainless straws and paper straws, but our customers didn’t like using it,” Tiu said.

Just this week, Tiu started implementing the use of lukay straws in their cafe, and even shared some photos of it on their Facebook page.

In her post last Wednesday, April 24, Tiu mentioned that the lukay straw is easy to make and is decomposable.

Its creativity captured the attention of a lot of netizens who also shared their takes on the improvised drinking tube.

Tiu’s post has amassed over 10,000 reactions, 826 comments, and 18,000 shares as of this writing.

Meanwhile, Tiu also posted on their Facebook page a link to the YouTube video showing how to make drinking straws out of lukay. /ra