She declares war on the humble plastic straw

Jennifer Winn
Courtesy Jennifer Winn
A girlhood spent near the water helped make Winn an advocate for the environment.

By MICHAEL MOORE JR.
USFSP Student Reporter

GULFPORT – What started as a law school project is now a proposed ordinance that would ban plastic straws in Gulfport.

Jennifer Winn, a 24-year-old student at Stetson University College of Law, took an environmental advocacy course this spring that requires students to tackle a semester-long project.

Her project? A campus ban on plastic straws, the ubiquitous – and indestructible – fixtures of modern life that end up clogging landfills, despoiling beaches and killing marine life.

That project eventually morphed into a proposal now being discussed by the Gulfport City Council to ban plastic straws from restaurants and beaches throughout the city.

When Winn reached out to City Council members, Michael Fridovich was the first to respond with his support.

“What are you doing right now?” he asked when he called her.

“Well, I’m about to watch a macaw fly over my head,” she responded.

A few weeks later, Mayor Sam Henderson reached out to say he liked the idea, too, and the city staff drafted the proposed ordinance.

When she isn’t studying for law school, Winn externs at Zoo Tampa at Lowry Park in Tampa, where, much to her chagrin, she works more with “people law” than “animal law.”

As a girl, she bounced between Gulf Breeze in the Florida Panhandle and St. Marys, Georgia – two small towns on the water – and dreamed of someday studying marine biology at James Cook University, the Australian school that stresses research in the ecosystems, people and economies of the tropics.

For her, growing up by the water was everything.

“I think it’s the most amazing thing, and I feel sad for people who aren’t there,” Winn said. “Just to be able to go outside and smell the saltwater. I feel like a lot of people don’t know what that’s like.”

When girlhood dreams met reality, however, Winn ended up at the University of Florida, where she graduated in 2014 with a bachelor’s degree in criminology, and then New Jersey, where she had a sales job with an energy company.

After a while the company needed her to move and she was faced with a decision: relocate to Cleveland or go to law school?

Law school it was.

Winn said she has been trying to make a difference ever since. Hence her concerns about plastic products, especially single-use, disposable plastic straws.

According to the nonprofit recycling organization Eco-Cycle, the United States goes through 500 million plastic straws a day. That’s enough to fill more than 127 school buses, Eco-Cycle says on its website.

Amid growing concerns over the environmental impact of all that plastic, governments and corporations around the world have begun to crack down on the sale and use of plastic products like straws.

British Prime Minister Theresa May last month announced a proposed ban on the sale of plastic straws and stirrers and urged the 52 nations in the Commonwealth to follow suit.

In the United States, cities such as Seattle, Miami Beach, Fort Myers Beach, and San Luis Obispo and Malibu, California, have already moved to ban plastic straws.

Locally, there has recently been discussion about limiting single-use plastic in St. Petersburg in a “No Straws St. Pete” campaign led by City Council member Gina Driscoll. Winn appeared before the council to urge a ban on plastic straws.

But some officials aren’t buying into the ban.

Gulfport City Council member Dan Liedtke didn’t seem too keen on the idea during an April 17 council meeting, saying that he wasn’t “in the business of banning things.”

He expressed concerns over how a ban would be enforced and instead supported creating an awareness campaign on the issue.

He also pointed to other harmful items that wash up on beaches, such as plastic bottles and bags. What would the city do about those? he asked.

To Winn, plastic straws are just the start of something bigger.

“It’s not about me or how I say it. I just want the message to be heard,” she said.

When she isn’t serving on the board for the Environmental Law Society and the Student Animal Legal Defense Fund at Stetson, you might find her cooking empanadas or walking her 5-year-old rottweiler-German shepherd mix, Luna.

Winn loves board games and describes herself as “way too competitive,” noting that she hates to lose at Monopoly. She’ll be studying in Cape Town, South Africa, this summer, and still dreams of getting a degree in biology someday.

Living by the water is still everything, she said.

“When you stick your feet in and you can’t see land for miles, it makes you realize that the world is so, so much bigger than yourself.”

Information from the New York Times was used in this report.

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