Back in 2015, a YouTube video of a sea turtle with a plastic drinking straw embedded in its nostril became the image that the sustainability movement needed. It was the face that launched a thousand plastic straw bans. In many ways, the campaign was a success story — one that elevated our awareness of single-use plastics to the point where it resulted in actual policy change. The anti-plastic straw movement didn’t actually originate with the turtle video.

Back in 2011, a 9-year-old named Milo Cress found it odd that the restaurants he would go to with his mom in Burlington, Vermont, would automatically serve drinks with a straw, whether or not their customer wanted one. He approached the owner of Leunig’s Bistro and Café in Burlington, and eventually, Leunig’s became one of the first establishments in the country to ask customers whether they wanted a straw or not.

Eventually, Cress and his mom made some calls to straw manufacturers and estimated that 500 million straws are used and discarded by people in the U.S. every day. The environmental advocacy group Eco-Cycle published Cress’s findings, which in the years since have been cited by nearly every major news media outlet that has covered the plastic straw beat, including CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. Later research revised the figure to be between 170 million and 390 million a day. Still, that is a lot of drinking straws per day.

The turtle video added just the right amount of outrage and motivation. The viral footage helped stir single-use plastic straw outrage into a frenzy. Celebrities called on their followers to #stopsucking, a social media campaign with a goal to make the plastic straw into environment enemy #1. Thousands of restaurants joined the pledge and the idea took off, reaching the rare environmental threshold of actual policy change. In 2018, Seattle became the first big city in the United States to ban plastic straws. It was followed shortly by other major municipalities in California, New Jersey, Florida, and other states. That same year, companies including Starbucks and American Airlines jumped on the anti-straw bandwagon, the former announcing it would launch a new “sippy” lid for its cold beverages starting in 2020, allegedly diverting more than 1 billion straws per year – of course the “sippy” lid was just a different kind of single use plastic (made from polypropylene, a type of plastic that has a 3 percent recycling rate in the U.S)  Then there were phases of paper straws, sugarcane, straws, and your own metal straw complete with a carrying case (BYOS – bring your own straw).

Did all this form a “tipping-point” event that drew more people into mindfulness about the amount of single-use plastics in the course of the ordinary day. If so, a young boy in Vermont and a video of a turtle was all it took.

There are little things that can make a big difference. That is the gist of the sub-title of Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling book, “Tipping Point.” As Gladwell points out, it is the context, the people, the nature of the thing itself, and other factors, which contribute to a tipping point. Merriam-Webster defines “tipping point” as “the critical point in a situation, process, or system beyond which a significant and often unstoppable effect or change takes place.”

Remember Hush Puppy shoes? First introduced to the marketplace in 1958, the line of shoes enjoyed some success, but by the early 1990s sales were down to 30,000 pairs a year and the shoes were only sold in backwoods outlets and small-town family stores. The company was thinking of shutting down production. But suddenly in late 1995 everything changed. Sales orders were coming in from New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles; by the end of 1996 sales were up to 430,000 pairs. Today, shoes in the Hush Puppy family are sold in 120 countries and sales are in the millions and millions. What changed? It seems that a tipping point was reached. The shoe brand now seemed revived and doing well.

I admit a degree of fascination about the topic, so use of the phrase “tipping point” catches my eye. The term seems a bit ubiquitous in the media some days. The term can be overused, but perhaps it rises to the occasion in key moments. Was Pope Francis’ encyclical, On the Care of Our Common Home, a tipping-point moment in world awareness of climate change and the human responsibilities associated with the planet and the poor.? Maybe.

Ross Douthat of the New York Times has written about the moral reluctance of citizens when faced with the disturbance of order and what makes a civilized society. He offers that there is reluctance on the part of every person to acknowledge information that impinges upon the comfort zone of our lives.

This has all led me to muse about tipping points, reluctance, our sense of order, and the life in faith. Every corporate leader wants to reach a Hush Puppy-like tipping point. But there isn’t a formula for it. Every pastor wants his parish to reach a tipping point where our faith pours out the front doors of the church into our own lives and the lives of the community. There isn’t a formula. But I think there are barriers. Is there a reluctance to bring our faith outside into the world because we are concerned it will disturb the peace at our dinner tables and places of work? Is there a reluctance to risk more of what little time we have during any given week? I could continue to speculate, but how would you answer: what keeps you from your personal faith tipping point? What is keeping the Holy Spirit from taking you beyond the current order of your life to a significant and unstoppable change? It is often the little things that can make a big difference.

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