This quantifies the nonsense of the San Francisco plastic straw ban, which was motivated by stopping plastic ocean emissions.
And I still can't get a non melting straw.
And I still can't get a non melting straw.
Yeah, you're right. Straws aren't the main problem. Of the two bags of litter I picked up today, there were only one or two. You could ban everything but straws and there'd still be so much plastic in the ocean that if you were forced to look at it, you'd vomit.
You're right. We're not going to fix plastic ocean trash by banning straws. We're going to have to fix plastic ocean trash by banning all one-time use plastics. For a start. And then ban the rest. And I guarantee you you're going to hate that.
That would be it's own economic and ecological disaster. How many trees are you going to cut down and how much ore will you mine to make this happen? And given the considerable weight savings plastics bring, how much fuel will we burn to transport our substantially heavier goods in the dystopia you envision?
Pardon my bluntness, but if we had a better habit of not eating so many to-go meals and sat down and ate off a reusable plate with reusable utensils like all of humanity had to just 100 years ago, single-use plastic would have almost no reason to exist.
If it doesn't include Philippines, China and India, it won't do much for fixing plastic ocean trash.
Also, we can obviously keep using one-time use plastics, as long as we don't dump it in the ocean, and still fix the plastic ocean trash problem.
Because it is obviously theatre to anyone with an ounce of intelligence and integrity. Another chance for unworldly Westerners to signal their grace without making real, substantial change.
It is clear that to fix ocean plastic we don’t need to ban plastics, we don’t need to do feel good campaigns about environmentalism in america… we need to promote public service announcements about littering in a few target countries and subsidize the creation of sanitation industries around the world.
Making americans bring their own bags and drink through terrible straws makes a certain kind of person feel good because it feels like they’re doing something, a feeling which is somehow enhanced by the thing being somewhat unpleasant and unpopular. Feeling like you’re doing something and actually accomplishing something are entirely different.
Starbucks solved it that way and it’s amazing. Their cold drinks now come with a lid that has a big hole you can drink out of like it’s a normal cup. No straws, no annoyance, everyone’s happy.
The problem are those stupid lids with a hole in the middle that make it literally impossible to drink without a straw. But the non-plastic straws aren’t up for the job.
So you’re stuck with a super annoying situation that just sucks.
[0]: (note: ref near the end, but good read overall, if a poor source) https://www.statnews.com/2017/10/06/hepatitis-a-outbreak-san...
That said, the straw ban is nonsense not because of this, but because they should ban goddamn plastic CUPS and plastic CONTAINERS first. I routinely get served a compostable straw with a petroleum-based plastic cup.
1. I'm a man so I don't have a purse to put it in, thereby making carrying it around a pain
2. cleaning it probably uses more resources than making a new straw and disposing of it
Perks include:
1) Space for a straw or extra objects but conveniently small enough for day-to-day activities
2) A good range of available colours and tones to match formality
3) Useful for holding travel documentation and other objects at the airport
4) Fun couples activities with matching bags
So because you now see that SF is a smaller slice of the global pie of pollution than you expected, then SF should not have attempted to address the local problem?
That's one metric. Are you sure it's the best way to understand this question?
If people are using them, then almost by definition people are finding value from them, so you have to be more careful than that (not to mention the administrative cost of the ban, but let's ignore that here).
Straws are a small enough thing that it's easy to be mindlessly dismissive by saying "bring your own", but that does not actually advance your side of the argument at all. You can see how absurd that argument is when applying it to other things -- why not ban wasteful drink bottles and cans? Just bring your own cup or bottle from home. Or ban the wasteful automobile, just walk or ride or catch a bus if you want to go somewhere.
Or looking at it another way -- straws are such a minuscule part of the plastic pollution problem that banning them really doesn't matter right? If you can handwave away their small inconsequential value, then I can handwave away their small inconsequential impact.
> A large group of people have determined that it is wasteful and have therefore pushed to change it. I'm not a "lone thinker" in this regard. I can't imagine a world view in which you deem the disposal of straws, used entirely to suck liquids inside of probably an hour window, is not an easy problem to solve. I would also argue that such seemingly trivial changes are symptomatic of increasing reflection and movement towards the reduction of plastic, rather than as you paint it, some kind of virtue signalling exercise intended to piss off other people. At the end of the day, most people are not in control of global supply chains or have extenuating circumstances that inhibit their ability to contribute to the reduction of plastic waste beyond mitigating what they do and dont chuck out.
Logical fallacies. None of what you wrote addresses what I wrote or the flaws in your assertion.
> (of a person, action, or process) using or expending something of value carelessly, extravagantly, or to no purpose.
So yes. It is extravagant to use a straw and then throw it out and it is wasteful especially when perfectly viable alternatives are available that do not produce plastic debris.
not "by definition" really
There is a limit of things you can ban before people will get tired of banning, and then you won't be able to ban things that might fully deserve it.
BTW, the world is running out of clean water, so how about we ban dishes in the restaurants to avoid wastefully washing them? Just bring your own, right?