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>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.

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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.

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).

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