The News Lens
Date: 2016/08/18
By: ZiQing Low
A video of a plastic straw being extracted from the nose of a sea turtle pushed Cheng 
Taiwanese student Cheng Wang-tung’s (鄭王棟) foldable paper straw design has won a prestigious international design award.
Cheng, a National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST) student, won Bronze at the 2016 International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) held at the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan on Aug. 17.
Shocked by video footage of a plastic straw being extracted from the nose of an Olive Ridley sea turtle in Costa Rica, Cheng came up with the idea for an environmentally friendly paper straw.
Cheng, a master’s student with NTUST’s Department of Industrial and Commercial Design, says as many as 3 billion plastic straws are used in Taiwan annually. He adds that the cost of recycling plastic straws is very high, and that plastic is not compostable. [FULL STORY]