Paper straws worse for the environment than plastic ones | Hacker News Reader

Paper straws worse for the environment than plastic ones

nypost.com

8 pointsScreaming_O6 comments

>The findings suck the air out of some long-winded environmental protests, which claimed for a decade that plastic straws were on par with toxic fumes or forest fires

I'm skeptical that this is a honest representation of many environmental protestors' claims.

Of course it isn't, and the Post is often pretty out there. It would be fair to say that many people latched onto plastic straws as a sea-turtle-killing scourge, but apparently weren't really too interested in stopping their massive consumption of single-use cups, spoons, and straws. The article's closing suggestion to instead go with reusable straws is a surprisingly sensible suggestion coming from the Post (we hope with a reusable cup too).

So am I. However, plastic straws are a bit of a lightning rod for greenwashing/virtue signalling given that they have an environmental impact relative to other plastics that you need to zoom in with about 20x magnification to even see on a chart. From memory when I looked up the figures for ocean plastics the single biggest problem is fishing nets, which outweigh everything else. Plastic straws are so far down in the noise floor you can't even see them there.

The New York Post links to the Economic Times:

> The Comprehensive Study on Single-Use Straws, commissioned by South Korea’s Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment, was revealed on Wednesday by Kim Wi-sang, an opposition People Power Party lawmaker, according to The Korea Herald.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/new-updates/paper-...

which cites the Korea Herald:

> The report, commissioned by the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment and disclosed Wednesday by Rep. Kim Wi-sang of the People Power Party, assessed the environmental impacts of four types of straws — conventional plastic straws, paper, biodegradable plastic and bio-based polyethylene (bio-PE).

https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10911494

I wasn't able to find the original report, it's not in the ministry's press releases:

https://www.mcee.go.kr/eng/web/index.do?menuId=461

It looks like the details of the report are not published, but there's a call to do so: http://www.ikld.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=342710

If the paper is contaminated, then paper cups used for coffee will also have it. To single out the straw is political hacking.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com