The Big Soggy Lie: How the Paper Industry Rewrote the Straw

Before factories, before glue, before the word “sustainable” became a marketing checkbox, there was rye. Rye stalks — smooth, strong and naturally hollow — served a quiet, elegant purpose in America’s early cocktail culture. As ice flowed south in the 1800s by rail and river barge, it carried with it the rise of chilled drinks, juleps and cobblers chief among them. And in bars from New Orleans to Charleston, you could find a bundle of straw — actual rye straw — stacked beside the silver cups.

These straws didn’t come from machines or patents. They came from farmers. After harvesting the grain, rural growers bundled the leftover stalks and sold or traded them to local taverns. Their byproduct became a product. And for a while, it worked — perfectly.

When experience meets the page

Anyone who has handled a natural rye straw knows what it is: a plant stem, not a construction. No glue, no dye, no filler. Just fiber. These straws don’t collapse in liquid. They don’t leach flavor or bleed color. We’ve left them overnight in soda, bourbon, lemonade — still sturdy, still neutral, still usable.

Yet when we open the books — product histories, old advertisements, even museum exhibits — the story flips but oddly, only when paper straws started fighting for market share.

The big soggy lie told by the paper lobbyists. In article after article, we’re told these “natural” straws failed: they turned to mush, imparted off-flavors, dissolved too quickly. That story didn’t come from farmers. It came from the newspaper. From the paper industry itself trying to discredit their perceived competition. From the writers paid to create such deceit afforded credentials such as we believe them, or used to. From the same people that taught the likes of Trump and Nixon the art of the lie.

The rise of the industrial straw

In 1888, Marvin C. Stone — a Washington, D.C., inventor and paper cigarette-holder manufacturer — patented the first modern paper straw. Spiral-wound paper, glued, sometimes waxed. It was clean, white, uniform. And it came with a story: that it solved the problems of the old stalks.

Stone’s advertisements promised “freedom from taste or odor,” and marketed to “first-class hotels, saloons and restaurants.” But this wasn’t just a product pitch. It was a narrative shift — from the field to the factory, from farmer-supplied to patent-protected.

The paper push: more than just straws

By the late 1800s, paper mills were multiplying fast. Newsprint demand was booming. New uses — cups, napkins, boxes, straws — meant more pulp to move. More sales. More machines.

And who owned the presses? The same companies printing the goods often supplied the media that praised them. It’s not hard to imagine how a narrative could cement itself: paper is progress. Paper is sanitary. Paper is better.

There’s no surviving memo that says “let’s bury the farmer’s straw.” But when you control the means of production and the message, the result can be the same. No campaign necessary. The medium was the message — and it favored itself.

The technical truth: who really got mushy?

Here’s where observation matters. Rye and wheat stalks are made of lignocellulosic fiber, wrapped in a waxy cuticle. They resist water. They don’t swell or split. By contrast, paper straws are made of chopped cellulose fibers bound by glue. Water seeps in. Adhesive softens. Layers separate. They fail.

What paper straw makers accused the rye stalk of doing — going mushy, falling apart — is exactly what their own product does. In fact, it always did. And still does.

Yet history stuck. Why? Because the accusation was printed. And print sticks.

The industrial cost: glue, water and waste

Behind the scenes, industrial paper straw making came with baggage. Adhesives in the 19th century were often animal-based: hooves, hides, bones boiled down. Cities dealt with the stench and the runoff. Later, these gave way to synthetic glues, but the problems remained: sourcing, toxicity, water use.

Paper pulping required immense amounts of water — tens of thousands of gallons per ton. Wastewater was dumped in rivers. Bleach and sulfites leached into ecosystems. The mills ran on coal and steam. All this, to replace a straw that had grown from the earth and returned to it.

The invisible loss

Farmers lost a modest but meaningful income stream. Urban laborers got factory jobs — and the pollution that came with them. Consumers got convenience, but not the truth. The “natural straw” was demoted, quietly, by repetition and by rhetoric. Not because it failed. But because it didn’t scale.

Reclaiming the straw

Today, the narrative continues: paper straws, we’re told, are eco-friendly. But many are coated in plastic, lined with glues that still contain PFAS, and wrapped in more paper to boot. Some turn soggy in minutes. Others add an aftertaste. Still, we buy them — because the story holds.

It’s time to rewrite it.

At Shaffer Farms and Naturally Ecoware, we work with nature, not against it. Our rye and wheat straws are grown without dyes, glues or coatings. They hold up in drinks for hours. They compost. They don’t leach flavor. Because they are what they’ve always been: simple, elegant and true.

So next time you hear that the “old straws went mushy,” ask who wrote that story — and who sold the paper it was printed on because the truth is, they don't.

For more on this conspiracy in plain site head over to Paper Straws Suck Youtube channel.