ELi5: How did plastic straws specifically become targeted for eco-friendly banning, but similar disposables like plastic forks and spoons didn’t?
In: Culture
Things that came with straws are more commonly ordered than foods that require disposable utensils. The volume is considerably higher.
For example, most fast food you can eat with your hands, but you still get a straw with the drink. Iced coffees you can drink with a straw are more popular than ever. Most drinks at bars came with a straw that people would immediately throw away. Etc.
There is a picture of a turtle with a straw stuck in its nose, that is the entire reason why and it is insane when we have so many bigger fish to fry. Plastic bags.. Plastic packaging for everything we buy……
9 year old makes false claim 500million straws are used in US every single day based on a random guess from business, in a school project. Has become a political talking point and cultural movement.
Because the climate death cult crowd needs something new to blame the end of the world on. Plastic straws aren’t the first thing.
People are missing the point in these comments:
Banning straws is like the near-ban of the 6-pack plastic rings (they didn’t get fully banned, but you’ve seen a ton of companies stop using them or using them less over the years). It’s about stopping the use of something that causes *direct harm* to sea life – not about the overall amount of plastic in the oceans.
Couple that with how endangered green sea turtles are, and when you have a product that is directly killing them, there is action that needs be taken.
It’s not about “an emotional reaction”, it’s about making sure a species doesn’t die out.
it was a perfect storm.
there was that video of a turtle with the straw in nose. which is terrible but probably pretty rare in relation to other garbage related deaths of sea animals.
then a kid decided to try to see how many plastic straws america used and threw away for a school paper. so they called all the local fast food restaurants nearby and asked them to estimate how many plastic straws they used in a day or week or whatever. then she just multiplied that average by however many restaurants the kid thought there were in the US… thats how they go the total.
its like… im not complaining, because pollution is bad and all… but straws becoming public enemy number 1, and letting corporations give themselves pats on the back for replacing them… it didn’t do that much for the environment.
I think because you really dont need a straw. For many foods you need a fork of knife of spoon to consume whatever it is but i cant think of any drink that you cant just drink out of the cup instead of using a straw. I for one despise plastic bags, single use containers and plastic cutlery and plates etc. I try to bring reusable wherever I go and even for those big gatherings seek eco friendly alternatives. We actually spend the extra spend the money on palm leave plates. I hope for the day where everyone has a picnic basket in their car with reusable everything concerning food. Bringing your own dishes and cutlery to large parties would be an awesome cultural norm. bio degradable take away containers should be mandatory, plastic bags illegal.
A couple of videos of sea creatures getting harmed by plastic straws went viral (e.g. there’s one of volunteers trying to pull out a plastic straw out of a sea turtle’s nose with pliers) and that got people so engaged that govs ended up taking action against straws.
The problem of course is that it’s very easy to ban straws, but also very ineffective as a eco-friendly measure, and arguably it’s actually harmful to society as a whole. Lemme explain.
Most people who use plastic straws now either use reusable straws made of metal or glass. Those are probably about as good for the environment as tote bags, i.e. not at all. I haven’t heard of any studies done on the efficiency of reusable straws, but in the case of tote bags, you’d actually have to reuse them literally thousands of times (which equates to multiple life times of usage) before they start being worth the upfront environmental cost. Cotton production requires a lot of energy (which mostly still comes from non-renewable sources) and tons of water, so disposable plastic bags actually end up being way better for the environment (as long as they don’t end up in the sea after being used). So unless you’re using reusable bags made from recycled plastic, you’re actually harming the environment by not using disposable ones.
Secondly, most people are able-bodied, so they probably can go without a straw, or even with a shitty “eco-friendly” disposable straw. But not all people can, and a lot of disabled people rely on disposable straws and their many advantages over their newer “eco-friendly” alternatives to quench their thirst. I’d suggest watching this video (https://youtu.be/3XGIxUXDWqw) about why alternative straws are inferior to disposable ones.
Latest Answers