Never going to happen. People already hate paper straws. No one is going to look at the current replacements and say "Yeah life was better after that" besides activists.
Life is better without plastic straws and plastic plates and plastic knifes and so on ... and people who don't care usually care but the brain structure to admit that is premature.
99% of these things are entirely cultural and habitual.
Straws are just another utensil, I agree with OP that we could largely make do with alternate materials for them.
Glass and steel straws sound nice on paper, but using them is a whole different ball game.
Nobody will really miss single apples wrapped in plastic in the store.
In 60 years I don't recall ever seeing a single apple wrapped in plastic in a store.
I have seen a plastic bag of apples pre selected weighed and ready to be grabbed .. but most apples are loose and you bag them yourself picking as many of the ones you want individually.
"how many apples are thrown away" is not just a question of personal responsibility and brains but how the public was "raised" over generations of mass production and cheap methods.
"even" in Germany ( I don't know why I keep saying this ), and in upper class super markets, fresh produce rots much quicker than anything we produce in our gardens. mid-priced frozen stuff triggers unhealthy/gassy reactions in stomach and guts that are not triggered by higher-priced frozen stuff but again, the crowd doesn't care because it was raised that way or does not know.
cheap liquor produce triggers worse reactions in body and brain, short-, mid- and long-term because the production methods are not as clean because producers are OK with the negative outcomes because they were raised to believe that their customers are "fucking stupid".
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/you-asked/why-do-they-spra...