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And here you are creating a straw man argument. Reducing straws won’t “save the planet” on its own. We will improve the planet by doing multiple things. Reduc

And here you are creating a straw man argument. Reducing straws won’t “save the planet” on its own. We will improve the planet by doing multiple things. Reducing plastic use (less packaging, fewer straws, reusable shopping bags) all play a role in a much bigger effort.

ibeckermayer 7y ago
Except that’s not improving the planet even a bit — chances are, every one of those straws being used in an American city would end up in a well run landfill and have minimal impact on the environment. It’s yet another example of knuckle dragging elites using state force to virtue signal. Meanwhile the real sources of the problem get ignored.
- athenot 7y ago
  > chances are, every one of those straws being used in an American city would end up in a well run landfill My front yard disagrees. It's adjacent to a somewhat busy road, and straws are part of the debris I have to routinely clean up (along with various wrappers and cigarette butts).
  - rantwasp 7y ago
    that's anecdotal evidence. how may of the straws used in your city end up in a front yard?
    - MiroF 7y ago
      The other poster provided no evidence at all, just stated things authoritatively.
    - benj111 7y ago
      On the other hand all the straws have to go somewhere. If you're picking up one straw a day from your garden, you'd expect each household in the city to generate at least one improperly disposed of straw per day. How do you think they generate statistics for this kind of thing? They don't count everything, they take samples and infer from that.
      - Cogito 7y ago
        If I'm picking up one straw a day from my garden, and assume everyone in my city has a straw in their garden every day, I would be making a Hasty Generalisation [0] It's far more likely that I live in a stray straw accumulation zone than straws are uniformly distributed over the entire city's gardens by some method. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulty_generalization#Hasty_generalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulty_generalization#Hasty_ge...
        benj111 7y ago
        I think its only as hasty as assuming that it's a straw accumulation zone. Considering that a lot of land in a city isnt your garden/house (shops, offices, parks), I would suggest that that would tend to balance out the risk of this being a SAZ. I take your point that this is a data point of one. But if I found one straw in my garden, it is astoundingly unlikely that is the only wild straw in my city. I wouldn't start putting a figure on it from that, but it does suggest the lower bound is much higher than one.
        Cogito 7y ago
        I agree, trying to generalise anything based on 1 data point is going to be fraught with danger of hastiness. Having never found a straw in my garden my intuition is that (not finding straws in every garden) is more likely than (finding straws in every garden) but obviously I have no valid basis to put a number of any kind on that. Now while I think the original post is an example of Hasty Generalisation, I think the bigger issue is the generalisation combined with a sample bias. Self reported data points tend to be interesting because otherwise they wouldn't be reported. My thesis is that regularly finding a straw in your garden is interesting because it is unusual.
  - kgermino 7y ago
    > and straws are part of the debris I have to routinely clean up I assume this cleaning includes putting them in your trash and the city taking them to a landfill? It's obviously not the best path, but cities[0] (by necessity) generally do a good job cleaning up the trash that gets scattered around. Bigger issue is non-urbanized areas where there isn't the density/wealth to clean up litter. [0] The collection of people and institutions, not just the government.
    - athenot 7y ago
      Our weather patterns here include heavy rain storms. What I don't happen to catch gets flushed away into the drain in the street, which leads to a nearby creek (stormwater is kept separate from sewage here). And of course, all the other parts of the road that don't happen to run up to a yard are not really groomed, so all that debris is flushed into the waterways.
    - the_gastropod 7y ago
      Let's consider the biggest city in the U.S., NYC. Manhattan? An island of 1.8 million no more than 2 miles wide. Brooklyn and Queens are on a spit of land called "Long Island". Together they have 4.8 million residents. Staten Island is, you guessed it, an island. And the Bronx is necessarily very close to a lot of water. People litter. Cigarette butts, straws, plastic bottles, etc. all very regularly and easily wind up in the ocean with an assist of a slight breeze.
      - CodeWriter23 7y ago
        Yep. Litterbugs, all 4.8 Million of them.
      - rabidrat 7y ago
        I saw it in action firsthand in NYC. A garbage truck picked up an overflowing trash bin around midnight, and the dome of trash on top fell off and into the street, and the worker did not even break stride. Many well-meaning people took the time to carefully place their trash on the trash that was in a garbage bin, but they may as well have just dropped it on the street directly for all the good it did.
- MiroF 7y ago
  "every one of those straws being used in an American city would end up in a well run landfill" oh you sweet summer child
- modernista 7y ago
  Except that’s not improving the planet even a bit. Arguably it raises awareness and the shard belief in at least the principle of individual responsibility. Against the overwhelming tide of the "Fuck it, I'll be dead before this shit starts to really come down on our heads anyway" which would otherwise be the reigning default.
  - rukittenme 7y ago
    Stop raising awareness and start triaging. At a certain point, everyone is aware of the top line issues and you just need to prioritize public attention. You (obviously) can't do this on your own and, at a certain level, the environmental movement's focus on bogus, small-time, feel-good issues reveals its cynicism. BUT PLEASE, stop defending it. You're just empowering those looking for a reason to resent the movement.
    - undersuit 7y ago
      >Stop raising awareness and start triaging. Like trying to start banning categories of plastic? Straws and shopping bags?
      - rukittenme 7y ago
        Banning categories of plastic is an action. Choosing to expend political capital on banning certain plastics is an act of triage.
        undersuit 7y ago
        The political capital is being spent to stop the banning of plastics. Banning straws should really be a simple issue, but there are people opposed to the ban not for actual reasons, but because straws are first. They falsely argue that the ban will eliminate the straw, they use pleas of emotion feigning concern that the law won't have carve outs for legitimate use, they mock the minor efforts, snuggly knowing that all their distractions are making straws into a huge issue that now becomes almost poisonous to approach. Just Ctrl+F for straws in this thread. Two top comments are taking shots at straws and once I post this reply, those two comments will have pushed the word straw to 97 counts. Lastly just for fun, just a tally of the most common words on this page: 447 the 230 to 224 a 221 of 182 ago 174 and 172 hours 170 reply 170 in 158 is 150 that 103 i 98 plastic 91 it 81 you 79 on 78 for 76 are 67 not 67 be 62 we 60 this 57 but 55 they 55 straws 52 with 51 it's 51 if 51 have 50 all 49 or 43 use 39 was 39 more 39 as 38 so 38 at 37 about 36 don't 36 can 34 straw 34 people 34 from 32 them 32 fishing The article is about merchant and fishing ships.
- ClumsyPilot 7y ago
  Most plastic ends up exported to recycling firms in china or Phillies, sometimes illegally, where its hand sorted, burned, or dumped. It is usually contaminated with food and several different types of plastic are mixed together, including unrecycleable ones. Sorting them for recycling is usually uneconomical.
marcosdumay 7y ago
I don't see people talking about reducing packaging. It was all about prohibiting shopping bags, and after that failed they got that turtle video and changed into prohibiting straws. What is doomed to fail again. You won't save the planet by focusing at the least effective, most demanding action one can do.
- viraptor 7y ago
  When I google "plastic packaging" there's a single link on the first two pages which doesn't talk about reducing packaging, sustainable alternatives, impact of packaging, or petitions to change something. If that doesn't count as people talking about it, I'm not sure what does.
- varjag 7y ago
  There's definitely a huge shift to reducing plastic packaging. Even large TVs now come packaged without polystyrene padding.
  - maccard 7y ago
    > There's definitely a huge shift to reducing plastic packaging. On the consumer side. You now no longer see the packaging as it arrives to your house. Do an image search for Pallet Deliveries (I don't want to point fingers) and look at just how much plastic wrap comes on the "reduced waste" packaging, when it's delivered to your supermarket/department store. It's utterly astonishing.
    - brianwawok 7y ago
      Do you know how many pallets you can wrap with one roll of stretch wrap? I bet there is a teaspoon of oil in the stretch wrap for an entire pallet of goods. It’s like 6 miles down the plastic use chart.
      - varjag 7y ago
        Where I live the enterprises recycle their packaging, something a lot easier to achieve than with individuals, so can't see it becoming a huge deal yeah.
rantwasp 7y ago
is it a straw man though? i'm not proposing anything, I was just providing some links and maybe hinting at the fact that if we want to reduce plastic in the oceans we should focus on the biggest sources of plastics. if everyone stops using plastic straws tomorrow it will not matter and will not make an impact on how much plastic keeps accumulating. here are a few more ideas for helping the planet: have fewer kids - this weird trick works, learn to love GMOs - this is the future, there is no way we can sustain the population growth we are experience with everyone eating organic, drive your car into the ground or until it's too expensive to repair it.
- wbl 7y ago
  The population is already stabilizing at 11 billion. Paul Ehrlich was wrong: richer countries undergo a demographic transition.
kaibee 7y ago
The uncomfortable truth is that action costs political capital. Something highly public, like plastic straws, by its nature is far more expensive than the actual environmental benefit that is accrued.
- deleted 7y ago
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deleted 7y ago
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viscanti 7y ago
> We will improve the planet by doing multiple things. The problem is that people don't have infinite time or attention. So if you raise awareness and guy buy-in for something like straws, you took away time and awareness from things that could have actually made a difference. To make things worse, people will eventually realize that getting rid of straws didn't have much impact and would be less likely to participate in future causes.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  People supported the anti-straw movement because it has zero impact on their life. The only people who even ask for straws are some women wearing lipstick. It's an easy issue to support. Now consider your ideas that would actually make a difference. I bet they actually change people's lifestyles which means those proposals are going to be political suicide unlike plastic straws/bags. For example, look how angry and defensive people get when it comes to their meat consumption. People will openly brag about how little they care about the slaughter of factory-farmed animals because it tastes good, just in response to someone bringing up ethical concerns. Though I do think plastic straw/bag movements are a gateway to larger ecological movements. You can't jump straight into massive changes unless society is advanced enough to not throw a shitfit if their drink doesn't come with a straw, something that we're still working on. So, maybe it's plastic straws today, but tomorrow a politician will have a real shot with a platform against waste wrt TFA.
  - slavik81 7y ago
    > People supported the anti-straw movement because it has zero impact on their life. My impression was the exact opposite. A plastic straw ban is invasive and annoying, which makes it a good way to prove commitment to the environmental movement. I just want to enjoy an occasional unplanned fountain drink without having to use a straw that dissolves in my mouth. I never litter, and would happily cut out some other use of plastic from my life to compensate. > So, maybe it's plastic straws today, but tomorrow a politician will have a real shot with a platform against waste wrt TFA. Plastic straw bans are not a prerequisite for fishing reforms. Regulating the commercial fishing industry to fix this problem will be difficult to coordinate internationally, but the end result is not going to have a noticeable effect on most people's lives. Those sort of reforms are the easiest policy wins and the most impactful, so the focus should be on campaigning for them directly.
EGreg 7y ago
In general we should stop focusing on 1% solutions — that even if somehow 100% successful will only solve 1% of the problem . Like focusing on mass murders or killing by cop only, in the USA, when talking about gun violence. I get that it’s the most visible thing but it sucks all the political capital out of the discussion to do something major.
DonHopkins 7y ago
If not a straw man argument, then at least the final straw that broke the camel's back.
CodeWriter23 7y ago
> reusable shopping bags So now, when I don’t have a shopping bag in the car (something I’ve done since back when it was specifically “uncool” to do so), and need a bag, I pay a dime for a plastic bag that has at least 5 times as much plastic in it, and it doesn’t photo-degrade in the sunlight like the filthy evil old T-shirt bags (which I also reused) of yesteryear.

ibeckermayer 7y ago

Except that’s not improving the planet even a bit — chances are, every one of those straws being used in an American city would end up in a well run landfill and have minimal impact on the environment. It’s yet another example of knuckle dragging elites using state force to virtue signal. Meanwhile the real sources of the problem get ignored.

athenot 7y ago
> chances are, every one of those straws being used in an American city would end up in a well run landfill My front yard disagrees. It's adjacent to a somewhat busy road, and straws are part of the debris I have to routinely clean up (along with various wrappers and cigarette butts).
- rantwasp 7y ago
  that's anecdotal evidence. how may of the straws used in your city end up in a front yard?
  - MiroF 7y ago
    The other poster provided no evidence at all, just stated things authoritatively.
  - benj111 7y ago
    On the other hand all the straws have to go somewhere. If you're picking up one straw a day from your garden, you'd expect each household in the city to generate at least one improperly disposed of straw per day. How do you think they generate statistics for this kind of thing? They don't count everything, they take samples and infer from that.
    - Cogito 7y ago
      If I'm picking up one straw a day from my garden, and assume everyone in my city has a straw in their garden every day, I would be making a Hasty Generalisation [0] It's far more likely that I live in a stray straw accumulation zone than straws are uniformly distributed over the entire city's gardens by some method. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulty_generalization#Hasty_generalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulty_generalization#Hasty_ge...
      - benj111 7y ago
        I think its only as hasty as assuming that it's a straw accumulation zone. Considering that a lot of land in a city isnt your garden/house (shops, offices, parks), I would suggest that that would tend to balance out the risk of this being a SAZ. I take your point that this is a data point of one. But if I found one straw in my garden, it is astoundingly unlikely that is the only wild straw in my city. I wouldn't start putting a figure on it from that, but it does suggest the lower bound is much higher than one.
        Cogito 7y ago
        I agree, trying to generalise anything based on 1 data point is going to be fraught with danger of hastiness. Having never found a straw in my garden my intuition is that (not finding straws in every garden) is more likely than (finding straws in every garden) but obviously I have no valid basis to put a number of any kind on that. Now while I think the original post is an example of Hasty Generalisation, I think the bigger issue is the generalisation combined with a sample bias. Self reported data points tend to be interesting because otherwise they wouldn't be reported. My thesis is that regularly finding a straw in your garden is interesting because it is unusual.
- kgermino 7y ago
  > and straws are part of the debris I have to routinely clean up I assume this cleaning includes putting them in your trash and the city taking them to a landfill? It's obviously not the best path, but cities[0] (by necessity) generally do a good job cleaning up the trash that gets scattered around. Bigger issue is non-urbanized areas where there isn't the density/wealth to clean up litter. [0] The collection of people and institutions, not just the government.
  - athenot 7y ago
    Our weather patterns here include heavy rain storms. What I don't happen to catch gets flushed away into the drain in the street, which leads to a nearby creek (stormwater is kept separate from sewage here). And of course, all the other parts of the road that don't happen to run up to a yard are not really groomed, so all that debris is flushed into the waterways.
  - the_gastropod 7y ago
    Let's consider the biggest city in the U.S., NYC. Manhattan? An island of 1.8 million no more than 2 miles wide. Brooklyn and Queens are on a spit of land called "Long Island". Together they have 4.8 million residents. Staten Island is, you guessed it, an island. And the Bronx is necessarily very close to a lot of water. People litter. Cigarette butts, straws, plastic bottles, etc. all very regularly and easily wind up in the ocean with an assist of a slight breeze.
    - CodeWriter23 7y ago
      Yep. Litterbugs, all 4.8 Million of them.
    - rabidrat 7y ago
      I saw it in action firsthand in NYC. A garbage truck picked up an overflowing trash bin around midnight, and the dome of trash on top fell off and into the street, and the worker did not even break stride. Many well-meaning people took the time to carefully place their trash on the trash that was in a garbage bin, but they may as well have just dropped it on the street directly for all the good it did.
MiroF 7y ago
"every one of those straws being used in an American city would end up in a well run landfill" oh you sweet summer child
modernista 7y ago
Except that’s not improving the planet even a bit. Arguably it raises awareness and the shard belief in at least the principle of individual responsibility. Against the overwhelming tide of the "Fuck it, I'll be dead before this shit starts to really come down on our heads anyway" which would otherwise be the reigning default.
- rukittenme 7y ago
  Stop raising awareness and start triaging. At a certain point, everyone is aware of the top line issues and you just need to prioritize public attention. You (obviously) can't do this on your own and, at a certain level, the environmental movement's focus on bogus, small-time, feel-good issues reveals its cynicism. BUT PLEASE, stop defending it. You're just empowering those looking for a reason to resent the movement.
  - undersuit 7y ago
    >Stop raising awareness and start triaging. Like trying to start banning categories of plastic? Straws and shopping bags?
    - rukittenme 7y ago
      Banning categories of plastic is an action. Choosing to expend political capital on banning certain plastics is an act of triage.
      - undersuit 7y ago
        The political capital is being spent to stop the banning of plastics. Banning straws should really be a simple issue, but there are people opposed to the ban not for actual reasons, but because straws are first. They falsely argue that the ban will eliminate the straw, they use pleas of emotion feigning concern that the law won't have carve outs for legitimate use, they mock the minor efforts, snuggly knowing that all their distractions are making straws into a huge issue that now becomes almost poisonous to approach. Just Ctrl+F for straws in this thread. Two top comments are taking shots at straws and once I post this reply, those two comments will have pushed the word straw to 97 counts. Lastly just for fun, just a tally of the most common words on this page: 447 the 230 to 224 a 221 of 182 ago 174 and 172 hours 170 reply 170 in 158 is 150 that 103 i 98 plastic 91 it 81 you 79 on 78 for 76 are 67 not 67 be 62 we 60 this 57 but 55 they 55 straws 52 with 51 it's 51 if 51 have 50 all 49 or 43 use 39 was 39 more 39 as 38 so 38 at 37 about 36 don't 36 can 34 straw 34 people 34 from 32 them 32 fishing The article is about merchant and fishing ships.
ClumsyPilot 7y ago
Most plastic ends up exported to recycling firms in china or Phillies, sometimes illegally, where its hand sorted, burned, or dumped. It is usually contaminated with food and several different types of plastic are mixed together, including unrecycleable ones. Sorting them for recycling is usually uneconomical.

marcosdumay 7y ago

I don't see people talking about reducing packaging. It was all about prohibiting shopping bags, and after that failed they got that turtle video and changed into prohibiting straws. What is doomed to fail again. You won't save the planet by focusing at the least effective, most demanding action one can do.

viraptor 7y ago
When I google "plastic packaging" there's a single link on the first two pages which doesn't talk about reducing packaging, sustainable alternatives, impact of packaging, or petitions to change something. If that doesn't count as people talking about it, I'm not sure what does.
varjag 7y ago
There's definitely a huge shift to reducing plastic packaging. Even large TVs now come packaged without polystyrene padding.
- maccard 7y ago
  > There's definitely a huge shift to reducing plastic packaging. On the consumer side. You now no longer see the packaging as it arrives to your house. Do an image search for Pallet Deliveries (I don't want to point fingers) and look at just how much plastic wrap comes on the "reduced waste" packaging, when it's delivered to your supermarket/department store. It's utterly astonishing.
  - brianwawok 7y ago
    Do you know how many pallets you can wrap with one roll of stretch wrap? I bet there is a teaspoon of oil in the stretch wrap for an entire pallet of goods. It’s like 6 miles down the plastic use chart.
    - varjag 7y ago
      Where I live the enterprises recycle their packaging, something a lot easier to achieve than with individuals, so can't see it becoming a huge deal yeah.

rantwasp 7y ago

is it a straw man though? i'm not proposing anything, I was just providing some links and maybe hinting at the fact that if we want to reduce plastic in the oceans we should focus on the biggest sources of plastics. if everyone stops using plastic straws tomorrow it will not matter and will not make an impact on how much plastic keeps accumulating. here are a few more ideas for helping the planet: have fewer kids - this weird trick works, learn to love GMOs - this is the future, there is no way we can sustain the population growth we are experience with everyone eating organic, drive your car into the ground or until it's too expensive to repair it.

wbl 7y ago
The population is already stabilizing at 11 billion. Paul Ehrlich was wrong: richer countries undergo a demographic transition.

kaibee 7y ago

The uncomfortable truth is that action costs political capital. Something highly public, like plastic straws, by its nature is far more expensive than the actual environmental benefit that is accrued.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

viscanti 7y ago

> We will improve the planet by doing multiple things. The problem is that people don't have infinite time or attention. So if you raise awareness and guy buy-in for something like straws, you took away time and awareness from things that could have actually made a difference. To make things worse, people will eventually realize that getting rid of straws didn't have much impact and would be less likely to participate in future causes.

hombre_fatal 7y ago
People supported the anti-straw movement because it has zero impact on their life. The only people who even ask for straws are some women wearing lipstick. It's an easy issue to support. Now consider your ideas that would actually make a difference. I bet they actually change people's lifestyles which means those proposals are going to be political suicide unlike plastic straws/bags. For example, look how angry and defensive people get when it comes to their meat consumption. People will openly brag about how little they care about the slaughter of factory-farmed animals because it tastes good, just in response to someone bringing up ethical concerns. Though I do think plastic straw/bag movements are a gateway to larger ecological movements. You can't jump straight into massive changes unless society is advanced enough to not throw a shitfit if their drink doesn't come with a straw, something that we're still working on. So, maybe it's plastic straws today, but tomorrow a politician will have a real shot with a platform against waste wrt TFA.
- slavik81 7y ago
  > People supported the anti-straw movement because it has zero impact on their life. My impression was the exact opposite. A plastic straw ban is invasive and annoying, which makes it a good way to prove commitment to the environmental movement. I just want to enjoy an occasional unplanned fountain drink without having to use a straw that dissolves in my mouth. I never litter, and would happily cut out some other use of plastic from my life to compensate. > So, maybe it's plastic straws today, but tomorrow a politician will have a real shot with a platform against waste wrt TFA. Plastic straw bans are not a prerequisite for fishing reforms. Regulating the commercial fishing industry to fix this problem will be difficult to coordinate internationally, but the end result is not going to have a noticeable effect on most people's lives. Those sort of reforms are the easiest policy wins and the most impactful, so the focus should be on campaigning for them directly.

EGreg 7y ago

In general we should stop focusing on 1% solutions — that even if somehow 100% successful will only solve 1% of the problem . Like focusing on mass murders or killing by cop only, in the USA, when talking about gun violence. I get that it’s the most visible thing but it sucks all the political capital out of the discussion to do something major.

DonHopkins 7y ago

If not a straw man argument, then at least the final straw that broke the camel's back.

CodeWriter23 7y ago

> reusable shopping bags So now, when I don’t have a shopping bag in the car (something I’ve done since back when it was specifically “uncool” to do so), and need a bag, I pay a dime for a plastic bag that has at least 5 times as much plastic in it, and it doesn’t photo-degrade in the sunlight like the filthy evil old T-shirt bags (which I also reused) of yesteryear.