6 ms·

MEPs back EU ban on throwaway plastics by 2021

89 points by lelf 7y ago

api 7y ago
Meanwhile the majority of the plastic comes from certain countries that will remain unnamed and that will never do anything about it...
- vages 7y ago
  The point here is to spur innovations that the unnamed countries can benefit from once they are cheap enough.
  - makapuf 7y ago
    Yes, advanced countries need to lead the path so that less advanced ones benefit from them, even if they don't have a direct gain to this they maybe owe that to less advanced nations. A bit tong in cheek ofc, but showing goodwill can be good for the image of a continent which serves its attractivity and might render its non plastic industries a bit more advance since the path of not using plastic seems clearly ahead (non native speaker here, excuse weird wordings)
- tomatotomato37 7y ago
  Before anyone starts saying anything about trash exports, some statistics for you to consider (Copypasted from last time this came up, also sorry mobile users for the formatting): 2010 total plastic marine debris[0]: 4,800k - 12,700k metric tons 2010 EU plastic marine debris[0]: 50k-120k metric tons (Higher than the US by ~1k) 2010 EU plastic marine debris percentage[0]: 1% 2016 EU export of nontoxic garbage to a country in top 10 plastic marine waste[2]: 269k tonnes (a lot missing statistics so wide error bars here) 2015 percent of nontoxic garbage export that is plastic/mixed[1]: ~9% Probable amount of EU plastic that gets exported to top 10 country: 26.9k - 53.8k tonnes Crude adjusted EU ranking if 100% of the doubled amount makes it into the ocean: ~10th Incredibly crude adjusted EU plastic marine debris percentage: 2% [0]: https://www.iswa.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Calendar_2011_03_AMERICANA/Science-2015-Jambeck-768-71__2_.pdf https://www.iswa.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Calendar_2011_03_... (the footnote of table 1 specifically) [1]: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Waste_shipment_statistics_based_on_the_European_list_of_waste_codes#Non-hazardous_notified_waste_based_on_LoW https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... [2]: http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do (You'll have to screw with the customizations to get useful statistics) [3]: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/waste/transboundary-waste-shipments https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/waste/transboundary-waste-... Edit: formatting
  - Pfhreak 7y ago
    > Incredibly crude adjusted EU plastic marine debris percentage: 2% Whoa, you are telling me can have a measurable, whole integer impact? That sounds like a huge win! A lot of the ways we solve this problem are going to be <1% at a time. 0.05% here, 0.75% there. We could say, "this doesn't solve a big percentage of the problem so why bother" or we can meaningfully tackle something as large as 0.5%.
    - darkpuma 7y ago
      Technically you can carve a wood log with a piece of sandpaper, but I recommend a chainsaw.
      - Pfhreak 7y ago
        The problem we have is not a wood log. The problem we have is a widely distributed pile of sawdust. If you find a wood log we can cut with a chainsaw, by all means let's do so. I just don't believe it exists.
        sgift 7y ago
        And even if you find one: If you only have sandpaper then sandpaper is still better then looking at the wood log and "sorry, I know this has to be worked on, but I don't have the right tools - and I know I probably won't get them in time either - but I won't do with this bad tool". Sometimes you have to use what you have, even if it sucks.
        darkpuma 7y ago
        We do have the tools. International economic and military sanctions on regions that refuse to cooperate in cleanup and reform efforts, and international funding for those that do. Other rivers have been cleaned up before, the big 10 polluting rivers can be cleaned up too. This is not a technical problem, it's a political problem. When push comes to shove, our current political regimes seem to have little regard for the environment as a whole. Token gestures only placate people so they don't demand meaningful reform.
- ben_w 7y ago
  That isn’t an argument for anyone else to not to do anything.
  - dwheeler 7y ago
    Perhaps, but if you want to solve a problem, you need to address the primary cause. If the European rivers never released any single-use plastic it would not have a serious impact on the problem. The vast majority of this pollution comes from the Asian rivers (esp. the Yangtze); if you want to solve the problem, you have to address them.
    - ben_w 7y ago
      True, but I don’t have a democratic vote in China, and I do have one in the EU. As the three largest economic blocks in the world are the USA, the EU, and the PRC, and they are roughly the same size (~15e9 $), if I ask my representatives to put a bit of pressure on the other two I expect almost nothing to happen.
- viraptor 7y ago
  Sure they will, if it's profitable. All it takes is EU introducing this and then implementing "we sorted ourselves out, now plastic packaging import is taxed extra". (yes I am ignoring how hard would it be to introduce that change)
cabaalis 7y ago
I remember a few years ago Coca-Cola was creating a plant-based bottle. [1] Does anyone know why this tech isn't taking off more than it has? [1] https://www.coca-colacompany.com/press-center/press-releases/coca-cola-produces-worlds-first-pet-bottle-made-entirely-from-plants https://www.coca-colacompany.com/press-center/press-releases...
- lol768 7y ago
  Are those bio-degradable?
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  Possibly the carbon emissions are greater for the plant-based product? Or the plant product diverts production away from food, making food more expensive?
- IshKebab 7y ago
  I believe they use PLA which is "compostable" (in an industrial composter which nobody ever uses). I think someone mentioned that it messes with normal plastic recycling methods. Plastic is sorted optically - maybe there is no way to distinguish it from PET or whatever they use now.
- rihegher 7y ago
  It was probably too early for the market to be successful
- checkyoursudo 7y ago
  My wife bought a plastic water bottle at McDonald's in Munich today. I can't say that I've looked at them much before, but I happened to look at this one. The label said "plantbottle®" and "14% nachwachsende Rohstoffe, 35% wieder verwerteter Kunststoff, 100% recyclebar" (14% renewable raw materials, 35% recycled plastic, 100% recyclable). The numbers might not be exact, just going by memory. So there's something out there at least. It was Vio brand, which I think is a Coke or Coke-related brand?
hn23 7y ago
Meanwhile all my vegetables, fruits etc is double packed or I pay three times the price for unpacked stuff. In my home the amount of plastics I have to put into the yellow bin has quadrupled over the last 10years.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  Where is this?
  - hn23 7y ago
    Austria. In Germany it is the same ir worse. They introduced a deposit fee on plastic bottles a few years ago because the percentage of glas bottles sold was too low. So all super markets started to create their own proprietary bottles (only to be returned to the originator; not any shop as a glas bottle) and now even more plastic bottles are sold and not returned. Markets like REWE or ALDI make some extra money.
    - ysleepy 7y ago
      Germany has a return rate of PET single-use bottles with deposit of 98.8%. Of which ~95% are recycled.
      - Scoundreller 7y ago
        I wonder how much the numerator is biased by fraud like: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/05/fraudster-made-1m-from-recycling-bottles-german-court-hears https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/05/fraudster-made... and https://www.toytowngermany.com/forum/topic/52114-lithuanian-scam-on-german-bottle-deposit-returns/ https://www.toytowngermany.com/forum/topic/52114-lithuanian-... Apparently you could produce fake bottles for a few cents and get a 5-15x return.
        BjoernKW 7y ago
        I'm not sure about the prevalence of this issue today but about 10 years ago I helped create a fraud protection system specifically targeted at deposit return fraud. However, at the time at least the problem apparently wasn't so much people manipulating return machines but rather bottles miraculously appearing out of nowhere from within the system (i.e. parties trying to register a bunch of bottles more than once or attempting to remove bottles in-between checkpoints in order to "reuse" them later on).
umvi 7y ago
One solution is to start a 1000 year landfill pipeline. Plastic is usually inert and harmless in a landfill and will slowly decompose. Landfills >> Rivers
- darkpuma 7y ago
  A TON of people have an irrational gut reaction against landfills in general and the concept of burying plastic in particular. There is absolutely no shortage of landfill space, but due to some mafia fuckery in the 80s (MOBRO 4000: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/01/what-happened-to-90s-environmentalism/#5 https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/01/what-happened-to-90s-e...) a ton of people think we're on the verge of running out of space.
  - riffraff 7y ago
    If you try to open a new landfill you'll be against a ton of people protesting you. So we're not out of space in theory but in practice it's problematic.
    - mantap 7y ago
      The same goes for sewage treatment plants or basically any infrastructure at all. A city where everybody is happy cannot exist.
- herogreen 7y ago
  Source for the fact that plastic will decompose in isolated environements (dry, no sun light, constant temperature, no radiations, only plastic) ? Because else you will have to engineer a system that risk leaking into the environnement (dirty water, particles, vapors, etc.).
- DocTomoe 7y ago
  Just a reminder that 1000 years is a crazy long time to maintain a landfill when we do not seem to be able to contain some waste for merely 30 years without it becoming a superfund site... https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/cursites/csitinfo.cfm?id=0200333 https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/cursites/csitinfo.cfm?id=0...
B1FF_PSUVM 7y ago
(clickbaity piece on topic, sort of) Metal drinking straw fatally impales woman through her eye after fall Elena Struthers-Gardner, 60, suffered brain injuries when she fell onto an eco-friendly metal drinking straw which impaled her eye, an inquest heard. https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/health-news/metal-drinking-straw-fatally-impales-woman-through-her-eye-after-fall/ar-AAE5usQ https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/health-news/metal-drinking-...
- beenBoutIT 7y ago
  She must not have seen this classic '1000 Ways to Die' segment where a platinum drinking straw starts out in a nostril and ends up in a frontal lobe. https://youtu.be/rALPqV7pUhk https://youtu.be/rALPqV7pUhk
- erentz 7y ago
  I’m always very uncomfortable with people drinking out of bottles or using straws or other utensils in a car while it’s in motion. If the driver needs to brake urgently bad things can happen. Bottles will take out your teeth. Straws and other utensils will damage your palette and throat or an eye.
- lostlogin 7y ago
  It was the final straw. While the above is obviously bad, how does it compare with the injury rate from plastic straws? With plastic it would not have been zero.
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
  Didn't Starbucks's metal straws injure children's mouths or something? (Edit: Yes, they were recalled. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/starbucks-metal-straw-recall-1.370551 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/starbucks-metal-straw-recal...) I think paper straws are a safer solution, alas they don't maintain rigidity well when wet.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
erentz 7y ago
I wonder if the EU wouldn’t accomplish a lot more for the world if it worked with (e.g.) China to fund a solution to catch the plastics flowing out of their rivers. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plastic-tide-10-rivers-contribute-most-of-the-plastic-in-the-oceans/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plas...
dwheeler 7y ago
The article notes that "Single-use plastic items such as plates, cutlery, straws, balloon sticks or cotton buds, will be banned in the EU under plans adopted on Wednesday...." because "These products... make up over 70% of marine litter". Being 70% of marine litter is a good argument that there's a problem to be fixed, but banning something only makes sense if there are reasonable alternatives or that doing without is acceptable. Plates and cutlery of single-use plastic have obvious alternatives. Straws are more complicated; here's one list discussing the alternatives: https://earth911.com/food/straw-alternatives/ https://earth911.com/food/straw-alternatives/ It wasn't clear to me that the impacts of this proposal were considered in detail; I hope the impacts were considered!
- esotericn 7y ago
  Surely 'no straw' is an obvious alternative to straw? In a generic sense, 'no X' should always be the first option if plausible. If your car could run without fuel, we wouldn't need alternative fuels!
  - sleavey 7y ago
    Tell that to McDonalds' customers who will refuse to "eat" their milkshakes without a straw. I do agree we should stop using these single use plastics, especially for junk from McDonald's, but in this instance you can't just tell people to stop using them in all circumstances.
    - tinus_hn 7y ago
      I’m sure the customers will eat milkshakes without a straw when the choices are eating it without a straw and throwing it away. You don’t need to tell people to stop using straws. You just stop giving them straws. Realistically though the plastic straws will be replaced by a slightly more expensive, biodegradable alternative.
  - myrion 7y ago
    Not for a lot of disabled people. There are many reasons why a straw might be necessary.
Ericson2314 7y ago
I feel like a huge portion of trash in Manhattan is due to single use utensils and container for food take out. The plastic bag ban that will take affect in 2 years doesn't even affect takeout. The trash problem in Manhattan has to do with density and lack of room for dumpsters in semi-public space, so it isn't more trash but just making manifest the same trash problem as everywhere else but on a local scale. This is a good microcosm for politics. I use next to no paper at work, don't even bring a backpack, and yet use plastic utensils every day. I'm stuff-free except this most basic wasteful junk. I would like to in addition to banning single use plastics also require that all offices have dish washers, and all take out places allow you to bring your own container.

89 points by lelf 7y ago

api 7y ago

Meanwhile the majority of the plastic comes from certain countries that will remain unnamed and that will never do anything about it...

vages 7y ago
The point here is to spur innovations that the unnamed countries can benefit from once they are cheap enough.
- makapuf 7y ago
  Yes, advanced countries need to lead the path so that less advanced ones benefit from them, even if they don't have a direct gain to this they maybe owe that to less advanced nations. A bit tong in cheek ofc, but showing goodwill can be good for the image of a continent which serves its attractivity and might render its non plastic industries a bit more advance since the path of not using plastic seems clearly ahead (non native speaker here, excuse weird wordings)
tomatotomato37 7y ago
Before anyone starts saying anything about trash exports, some statistics for you to consider (Copypasted from last time this came up, also sorry mobile users for the formatting): 2010 total plastic marine debris[0]: 4,800k - 12,700k metric tons 2010 EU plastic marine debris[0]: 50k-120k metric tons (Higher than the US by ~1k) 2010 EU plastic marine debris percentage[0]: 1% 2016 EU export of nontoxic garbage to a country in top 10 plastic marine waste[2]: 269k tonnes (a lot missing statistics so wide error bars here) 2015 percent of nontoxic garbage export that is plastic/mixed[1]: ~9% Probable amount of EU plastic that gets exported to top 10 country: 26.9k - 53.8k tonnes Crude adjusted EU ranking if 100% of the doubled amount makes it into the ocean: ~10th Incredibly crude adjusted EU plastic marine debris percentage: 2% [0]: https://www.iswa.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Calendar_2011_03_AMERICANA/Science-2015-Jambeck-768-71__2_.pdf https://www.iswa.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Calendar_2011_03_... (the footnote of table 1 specifically) [1]: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Waste_shipment_statistics_based_on_the_European_list_of_waste_codes#Non-hazardous_notified_waste_based_on_LoW https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... [2]: http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do (You'll have to screw with the customizations to get useful statistics) [3]: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/waste/transboundary-waste-shipments https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/waste/transboundary-waste-... Edit: formatting
- Pfhreak 7y ago
  > Incredibly crude adjusted EU plastic marine debris percentage: 2% Whoa, you are telling me can have a measurable, whole integer impact? That sounds like a huge win! A lot of the ways we solve this problem are going to be <1% at a time. 0.05% here, 0.75% there. We could say, "this doesn't solve a big percentage of the problem so why bother" or we can meaningfully tackle something as large as 0.5%.
  - darkpuma 7y ago
    Technically you can carve a wood log with a piece of sandpaper, but I recommend a chainsaw.
    - Pfhreak 7y ago
      The problem we have is not a wood log. The problem we have is a widely distributed pile of sawdust. If you find a wood log we can cut with a chainsaw, by all means let's do so. I just don't believe it exists.
      - sgift 7y ago
        And even if you find one: If you only have sandpaper then sandpaper is still better then looking at the wood log and "sorry, I know this has to be worked on, but I don't have the right tools - and I know I probably won't get them in time either - but I won't do with this bad tool". Sometimes you have to use what you have, even if it sucks.
        darkpuma 7y ago
        We do have the tools. International economic and military sanctions on regions that refuse to cooperate in cleanup and reform efforts, and international funding for those that do. Other rivers have been cleaned up before, the big 10 polluting rivers can be cleaned up too. This is not a technical problem, it's a political problem. When push comes to shove, our current political regimes seem to have little regard for the environment as a whole. Token gestures only placate people so they don't demand meaningful reform.
ben_w 7y ago
That isn’t an argument for anyone else to not to do anything.
- dwheeler 7y ago
  Perhaps, but if you want to solve a problem, you need to address the primary cause. If the European rivers never released any single-use plastic it would not have a serious impact on the problem. The vast majority of this pollution comes from the Asian rivers (esp. the Yangtze); if you want to solve the problem, you have to address them.
  - ben_w 7y ago
    True, but I don’t have a democratic vote in China, and I do have one in the EU. As the three largest economic blocks in the world are the USA, the EU, and the PRC, and they are roughly the same size (~15e9 $), if I ask my representatives to put a bit of pressure on the other two I expect almost nothing to happen.
viraptor 7y ago
Sure they will, if it's profitable. All it takes is EU introducing this and then implementing "we sorted ourselves out, now plastic packaging import is taxed extra". (yes I am ignoring how hard would it be to introduce that change)

cabaalis 7y ago

I remember a few years ago Coca-Cola was creating a plant-based bottle. [1] Does anyone know why this tech isn't taking off more than it has? [1] https://www.coca-colacompany.com/press-center/press-releases/coca-cola-produces-worlds-first-pet-bottle-made-entirely-from-plants https://www.coca-colacompany.com/press-center/press-releases...

lol768 7y ago
Are those bio-degradable?
Scoundreller 7y ago
Possibly the carbon emissions are greater for the plant-based product? Or the plant product diverts production away from food, making food more expensive?
IshKebab 7y ago
I believe they use PLA which is "compostable" (in an industrial composter which nobody ever uses). I think someone mentioned that it messes with normal plastic recycling methods. Plastic is sorted optically - maybe there is no way to distinguish it from PET or whatever they use now.
rihegher 7y ago
It was probably too early for the market to be successful
checkyoursudo 7y ago
My wife bought a plastic water bottle at McDonald's in Munich today. I can't say that I've looked at them much before, but I happened to look at this one. The label said "plantbottle®" and "14% nachwachsende Rohstoffe, 35% wieder verwerteter Kunststoff, 100% recyclebar" (14% renewable raw materials, 35% recycled plastic, 100% recyclable). The numbers might not be exact, just going by memory. So there's something out there at least. It was Vio brand, which I think is a Coke or Coke-related brand?

hn23 7y ago

Meanwhile all my vegetables, fruits etc is double packed or I pay three times the price for unpacked stuff. In my home the amount of plastics I have to put into the yellow bin has quadrupled over the last 10years.

Scoundreller 7y ago
Where is this?
- hn23 7y ago
  Austria. In Germany it is the same ir worse. They introduced a deposit fee on plastic bottles a few years ago because the percentage of glas bottles sold was too low. So all super markets started to create their own proprietary bottles (only to be returned to the originator; not any shop as a glas bottle) and now even more plastic bottles are sold and not returned. Markets like REWE or ALDI make some extra money.
  - ysleepy 7y ago
    Germany has a return rate of PET single-use bottles with deposit of 98.8%. Of which ~95% are recycled.
    - Scoundreller 7y ago
      I wonder how much the numerator is biased by fraud like: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/05/fraudster-made-1m-from-recycling-bottles-german-court-hears https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/05/fraudster-made... and https://www.toytowngermany.com/forum/topic/52114-lithuanian-scam-on-german-bottle-deposit-returns/ https://www.toytowngermany.com/forum/topic/52114-lithuanian-... Apparently you could produce fake bottles for a few cents and get a 5-15x return.
      - BjoernKW 7y ago
        I'm not sure about the prevalence of this issue today but about 10 years ago I helped create a fraud protection system specifically targeted at deposit return fraud. However, at the time at least the problem apparently wasn't so much people manipulating return machines but rather bottles miraculously appearing out of nowhere from within the system (i.e. parties trying to register a bunch of bottles more than once or attempting to remove bottles in-between checkpoints in order to "reuse" them later on).

umvi 7y ago

One solution is to start a 1000 year landfill pipeline. Plastic is usually inert and harmless in a landfill and will slowly decompose. Landfills >> Rivers

darkpuma 7y ago
A TON of people have an irrational gut reaction against landfills in general and the concept of burying plastic in particular. There is absolutely no shortage of landfill space, but due to some mafia fuckery in the 80s (MOBRO 4000: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/01/what-happened-to-90s-environmentalism/#5 https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/01/what-happened-to-90s-e...) a ton of people think we're on the verge of running out of space.
- riffraff 7y ago
  If you try to open a new landfill you'll be against a ton of people protesting you. So we're not out of space in theory but in practice it's problematic.
  - mantap 7y ago
    The same goes for sewage treatment plants or basically any infrastructure at all. A city where everybody is happy cannot exist.
herogreen 7y ago
Source for the fact that plastic will decompose in isolated environements (dry, no sun light, constant temperature, no radiations, only plastic) ? Because else you will have to engineer a system that risk leaking into the environnement (dirty water, particles, vapors, etc.).
DocTomoe 7y ago
Just a reminder that 1000 years is a crazy long time to maintain a landfill when we do not seem to be able to contain some waste for merely 30 years without it becoming a superfund site... https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/cursites/csitinfo.cfm?id=0200333 https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/cursites/csitinfo.cfm?id=0...

B1FF_PSUVM 7y ago

(clickbaity piece on topic, sort of) Metal drinking straw fatally impales woman through her eye after fall Elena Struthers-Gardner, 60, suffered brain injuries when she fell onto an eco-friendly metal drinking straw which impaled her eye, an inquest heard. https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/health-news/metal-drinking-straw-fatally-impales-woman-through-her-eye-after-fall/ar-AAE5usQ https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/health-news/metal-drinking-...

beenBoutIT 7y ago
She must not have seen this classic '1000 Ways to Die' segment where a platinum drinking straw starts out in a nostril and ends up in a frontal lobe. https://youtu.be/rALPqV7pUhk https://youtu.be/rALPqV7pUhk
erentz 7y ago
I’m always very uncomfortable with people drinking out of bottles or using straws or other utensils in a car while it’s in motion. If the driver needs to brake urgently bad things can happen. Bottles will take out your teeth. Straws and other utensils will damage your palette and throat or an eye.
lostlogin 7y ago
It was the final straw. While the above is obviously bad, how does it compare with the injury rate from plastic straws? With plastic it would not have been zero.
TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
Didn't Starbucks's metal straws injure children's mouths or something? (Edit: Yes, they were recalled. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/starbucks-metal-straw-recall-1.370551 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/starbucks-metal-straw-recal...) I think paper straws are a safer solution, alas they don't maintain rigidity well when wet.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

erentz 7y ago

I wonder if the EU wouldn’t accomplish a lot more for the world if it worked with (e.g.) China to fund a solution to catch the plastics flowing out of their rivers. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plastic-tide-10-rivers-contribute-most-of-the-plastic-in-the-oceans/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plas...

dwheeler 7y ago

The article notes that "Single-use plastic items such as plates, cutlery, straws, balloon sticks or cotton buds, will be banned in the EU under plans adopted on Wednesday...." because "These products... make up over 70% of marine litter". Being 70% of marine litter is a good argument that there's a problem to be fixed, but banning something only makes sense if there are reasonable alternatives or that doing without is acceptable. Plates and cutlery of single-use plastic have obvious alternatives. Straws are more complicated; here's one list discussing the alternatives: https://earth911.com/food/straw-alternatives/ https://earth911.com/food/straw-alternatives/ It wasn't clear to me that the impacts of this proposal were considered in detail; I hope the impacts were considered!

esotericn 7y ago
Surely 'no straw' is an obvious alternative to straw? In a generic sense, 'no X' should always be the first option if plausible. If your car could run without fuel, we wouldn't need alternative fuels!
- sleavey 7y ago
  Tell that to McDonalds' customers who will refuse to "eat" their milkshakes without a straw. I do agree we should stop using these single use plastics, especially for junk from McDonald's, but in this instance you can't just tell people to stop using them in all circumstances.
  - tinus_hn 7y ago
    I’m sure the customers will eat milkshakes without a straw when the choices are eating it without a straw and throwing it away. You don’t need to tell people to stop using straws. You just stop giving them straws. Realistically though the plastic straws will be replaced by a slightly more expensive, biodegradable alternative.
- myrion 7y ago
  Not for a lot of disabled people. There are many reasons why a straw might be necessary.

Ericson2314 7y ago

I feel like a huge portion of trash in Manhattan is due to single use utensils and container for food take out. The plastic bag ban that will take affect in 2 years doesn't even affect takeout. The trash problem in Manhattan has to do with density and lack of room for dumpsters in semi-public space, so it isn't more trash but just making manifest the same trash problem as everywhere else but on a local scale. This is a good microcosm for politics. I use next to no paper at work, don't even bring a backpack, and yet use plastic utensils every day. I'm stuff-free except this most basic wasteful junk. I would like to in addition to banning single use plastics also require that all offices have dish washers, and all take out places allow you to bring your own container.