I don’t get the whole “don’t use plastic straws” but at the same time we use tons of other plastic products. Is there a difference?
In: Earth Science
The controversy of plastic straws and turtles arose from [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wH878t78bw) video uploaded to YouTube in 2015.
In it a turtle has what appears to be a plastic straw lodged rather deep up one of its nostrils.
The individual in the video (a researcher named Christine Figgener) posted a write up about the incident in a [Nature journal article](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07287-z).
There really isn’t anything specifically about plastic straws that make them bad compared to other plastic items, other than:
* We use and dispose of a large number of them each year
* They are small and long enough to trap or get trapped in various wildlife and their orifices (holes)
Though these attributes are true of many plastic items, particularly those that are small and brightly coloured – which can be mistaken for food then ingested, or just get stuck by accident.
Really there is no difference, it was just the video that caused a large emotional reaction for viewers. We need to halt leakage of our waste into the environment, not just plastics but all materials, chemicals, and pollutants.
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