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Why is the world so obsesed with plastic straws? Are those really the most polluting item right now? Why do we not focus rather on plastic bottles for eg. soft

Why is the world so obsesed with plastic straws? Are those really the most polluting item right now? Why do we not focus rather on plastic bottles for eg. soft drinks, which are the only option in many markets? Or useless double and triple packaging? Even the term "carbon footprint" is used to shift focus from "big oil" to "average joe" [0]... how many years of plastic straws is equivalent to eg. deepwater horizon oil spil? [0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/23/big-oil-coined-carbon-footprints-to-blame-us-for-their-greed-keep-them-on-the-hook https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/23/big-oi...

burlesona 5y ago
Virtue signaling only works if people can see you do it. So if you're a restaurant, how many noticeable things can you do to demonstrate you care about the environment without actually changing your business model, profits, or unit economics?
- xracy 5y ago
  togo packaging: Plastic Bags, Plastic(-lined) Cups/Lids, Plastic containers, But uhh, also, we should totally charge companies the cost to clean up the waste they produce.
  - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
    Or a soda... in a plastic bottle... with a plastic label... wrapped in a plastic "sixpack"... on a plastic pallet, wrapped in plastic wrap.
    - zardo 5y ago
      Isn't the point of plastic pallets that they're more durable/reusable than wood?
      - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
        Well yeah, but even if they're 5 times as durable, dumping 5 wooden pallets into a forrest is a lot better than one plastic one. Plus all the plastic inside plastic inside plastic coverd in plastic carried on that pallet.
josh_today 5y ago
version_five 5y ago
What is the value of projecting our collective oil dependence onto the companies that provide it? Pretending it's somehow oil companies fault while not making any personal changes is delusional. I think focusing on straws is stupid, but so is pretending that but for oil companies we'd have no problems
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  Sub out “oil” for “tobacco” in your comment for a moment.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  Our personal choice is to use fuel, because we need energy, BPs personal (well, corporate) incompetence was at fault for the totally useless (nothing good, no heat, no transport, no plastics, just damage to our environment) oil spill in 2010. So, we, a collective of millions and billions of people are being put on pedestal for using straws (if we do, many of us don't), while one incompetent company (people there) offsets the efforts of literally millions of people.
  - version_five 5y ago
    I'm not trying to excuse oil spills, but I think it's dodging responsibility to base our whole lives around drilling a dirty fuel out of the ground and then blame only the company when these happen. Using oil entails some risk that it's going to contaminate the environment, and we are collectively responsible.
    - paulryanrogers 5y ago
      Responsibly isn't equally weighted. Regulatory capture and decades of insidious 'education' and advertising also tip the scales. The solution is collective though. Externalities cannot be ignored forever, even if the short sighted grifters die before the world is an uninhabitable waste.
soheil 5y ago
ESG browny points is probably a key component of that. It's dangerous to let politicians decide what is considered green. There has to be a quantifiably measurable way the impact on the environment from any single product is judged. If there isn't a clear way to do so then we should refrain from blanket banning a product.
- baja_blast 5y ago
  Fun fact Tesla has the lowest ESG rating out of all of the auto companies listed https://www.indexologyblog.com/2021/05/25/update-teslas-standing-in-the-sp-500-esg-index/ https://www.indexologyblog.com/2021/05/25/update-teslas-stan.... It's interesting to see Tesla a company that spearheaded EVs ranked lower than Exxon, GM and Nike on "Environmental Social Governance". Nike which is one of the top ESG rated companies makes luxury shoes in sweatshops by people with almost no rights as close to slavery as one can get. Telsa on the other hand pays people fair wages and does not use forced labor is less environmentally and socially responsible. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/17/your-favorite-nikes-might-be-made-forced-labor-heres-why/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/17/your-favo...
zukzuk 5y ago
Because they are so utterly pointless. Plastic straws are a symbol of an almost entirely unnecessary use of plastic. And that symbolism — as seems to be the case with just about anything with any semblance of symbolic value nowadays — has become politicized and polarized, which in turn has further elevated straws' symbolic value for both sides (there's a "straw man argument" pun here somewhere). The right is obsessed with how the left is trying to control even the most trivial aspects of everyone's lives, and the left is obsessed with how the right would rather selfishly spew plastic into the environment than to give up even the most trivial conveniences. This feels like a tension that can exist only in the Twitterverse. I really can't imagine pre-internet society actually having strong opinions about any of this.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  So is double packaging (eg plastic bottles wrapped in plastic to form a "sixpack", on a pallet, wrapped in more plastic, so plastic within a plastic within a plastic, prepackaged bananas, double packed cosmetics, toothpaste in plastic covered cardboard boxes, etc.), and it contributes a lot more (by weight of trash) than straws. But we have basically zero impact on the first, and drinks in a plastic bottle are sometimes literally the only choice, and no politician dares mention cocacola and walmart, but we all get blamed for straws that we maybe use twice a year... in mcdonalds.
- layer8 5y ago
  Straws are essential for drinks served with ice, in particular cocktails.
  - nightfly 5y ago
    Definitely not "essential" for cold drinks
    - layer8 5y ago
      Since the ice cubes float on top, your nose and upper lip tends to bump into them otherwise. Maybe there’s some clever drinking glass design that could avoid that.
moron4hire 5y ago
And we don't even need straws. You can just drink from the rim of the glass at a sit down restaurant like you do at home, or a to-go drink could have a sippy lid like a coffee.
- doubled112 5y ago
  I can't be the only person that just does this when the drink comes with a paper straw.
  - moron4hire 5y ago
    Unfortunately, as soon as they hand out the straw, it doesn't matter if you use it or not, it's going into the trash. So often the wrapper gets wet while it's sitting on the table and they just discard every paper product left on the table.
- Larrikin 5y ago
  Milk shakes, boba tea, thick smoothies, and similar drinks are all awful to consume without a straw. If an establishment insists on me using a paper straw with them, I'd rather just not order them.
  - moron4hire 5y ago
    "Awful"? Isn't that a bit of an overstatement? Also, I get a milkshake maybe two times a year. Doesn't warrant every other drink normalizing on straw usage.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  You don't need plastic bottles either... you can use glass ones... and a lot more plastic bottles are produced and thrown away than plastic straws... and they usually come with plastic labels, wrapped in plastic 6packs, on a pallet, wrapped in plastic wrap. You could easily replace that with a glass bottle in a reusable plastic crate. I've seen quite a few videos of flood waters carrying waste down some random (usually asian or african) rivers... didn't see a lot of straws there.
qiskit 5y ago
> Why is the world so obsesed with plastic straws? The world? It's just the media and virtue signalers who are obsessed. Far less than 1% of the population. Sadly, these people control the megaphone and makes it seem like "the world" is concerned. > [0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/23/big-oi https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/23/big-oi... Hilarious. The virtue signalers' manifesto - "Personal virtue is an eternally seductive goal in progressive movements, and the climate movement is no exception." > "Citizens see themselves as part of civil society, as actors in the political system" Actors. Don't they just follow direction? Sounds about right. > "I have 100% clean electricity at home because people organized to make that option and the solar and wind power behind it available." And I can guarantee that her "clean electricity" mostly comes from burning biomass, natural gas, etc. I'd bet all my upvotes on that. > I do some of my errands by bicycle because the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition worked for decades to put bicycle paths across the city and otherwise make it safer to get about on two wheels. Just some? Why not all of the errands? > That vegan options are available at a lot of fast-food chains is because enough consumers have created a profitable market for them. Vegan options exist because wealthy industrialists want to feed people processed slop instead of actual food. The people aren't hankering for some in/anti-human diet. Billionaire industrialists who want to make more money by creating a new industry paid PR firms to push veganism to dull minds. Just like tobacco companies supported "women's equality" a century ago to breakdown the taboo on female smoking and sell more cigarettes. The author of that article is why we have paper straws. The problem with virtue signaling is that the ends are the pseudo-virtue, not actual good. A virtue signalers feels good because he gave a bum $100, even though the bum used the $100 to buy drugs and kill himself. The author of the article virtue signals even though she produces more carbon pollution than 99.99999999999999999% of the human population. Think about that.
resoluteteeth 5y ago
I think they were just seen as low hanging fruit since you can usually do without straws entirely but then eliminating plastic straws got hijacked as a way of selling alternate straws. So basically it's like most other attempts to make stuff more environmentally friendly in the US.
Tagbert 5y ago
It is a small thing, though I do get annoyed when going to a restaurant that they just automatically throw down straws for every drink. They don’t even make them something you can request, if needed. The assumption is that they are wanted. Once they are on the table they won’t take them back. I’ve tried to express this to the servers, but they just look at me like I’m a weirdo and then next time I go there they do the same thing again. We probably don’t need bans. Just get the restaurants to only provide straws upon request.

burlesona 5y ago

Virtue signaling only works if people can see you do it. So if you're a restaurant, how many noticeable things can you do to demonstrate you care about the environment without actually changing your business model, profits, or unit economics?

xracy 5y ago
togo packaging: Plastic Bags, Plastic(-lined) Cups/Lids, Plastic containers, But uhh, also, we should totally charge companies the cost to clean up the waste they produce.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  Or a soda... in a plastic bottle... with a plastic label... wrapped in a plastic "sixpack"... on a plastic pallet, wrapped in plastic wrap.
  - zardo 5y ago
    Isn't the point of plastic pallets that they're more durable/reusable than wood?
    - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
      Well yeah, but even if they're 5 times as durable, dumping 5 wooden pallets into a forrest is a lot better than one plastic one. Plus all the plastic inside plastic inside plastic coverd in plastic carried on that pallet.

josh_today 5y ago

version_five 5y ago

What is the value of projecting our collective oil dependence onto the companies that provide it? Pretending it's somehow oil companies fault while not making any personal changes is delusional. I think focusing on straws is stupid, but so is pretending that but for oil companies we'd have no problems

ceejayoz 5y ago
Sub out “oil” for “tobacco” in your comment for a moment.
ajsnigrutin 5y ago
Our personal choice is to use fuel, because we need energy, BPs personal (well, corporate) incompetence was at fault for the totally useless (nothing good, no heat, no transport, no plastics, just damage to our environment) oil spill in 2010. So, we, a collective of millions and billions of people are being put on pedestal for using straws (if we do, many of us don't), while one incompetent company (people there) offsets the efforts of literally millions of people.
- version_five 5y ago
  I'm not trying to excuse oil spills, but I think it's dodging responsibility to base our whole lives around drilling a dirty fuel out of the ground and then blame only the company when these happen. Using oil entails some risk that it's going to contaminate the environment, and we are collectively responsible.
  - paulryanrogers 5y ago
    Responsibly isn't equally weighted. Regulatory capture and decades of insidious 'education' and advertising also tip the scales. The solution is collective though. Externalities cannot be ignored forever, even if the short sighted grifters die before the world is an uninhabitable waste.

soheil 5y ago

ESG browny points is probably a key component of that. It's dangerous to let politicians decide what is considered green. There has to be a quantifiably measurable way the impact on the environment from any single product is judged. If there isn't a clear way to do so then we should refrain from blanket banning a product.

baja_blast 5y ago
Fun fact Tesla has the lowest ESG rating out of all of the auto companies listed https://www.indexologyblog.com/2021/05/25/update-teslas-standing-in-the-sp-500-esg-index/ https://www.indexologyblog.com/2021/05/25/update-teslas-stan.... It's interesting to see Tesla a company that spearheaded EVs ranked lower than Exxon, GM and Nike on "Environmental Social Governance". Nike which is one of the top ESG rated companies makes luxury shoes in sweatshops by people with almost no rights as close to slavery as one can get. Telsa on the other hand pays people fair wages and does not use forced labor is less environmentally and socially responsible. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/17/your-favorite-nikes-might-be-made-forced-labor-heres-why/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/17/your-favo...

zukzuk 5y ago

Because they are so utterly pointless. Plastic straws are a symbol of an almost entirely unnecessary use of plastic. And that symbolism — as seems to be the case with just about anything with any semblance of symbolic value nowadays — has become politicized and polarized, which in turn has further elevated straws' symbolic value for both sides (there's a "straw man argument" pun here somewhere). The right is obsessed with how the left is trying to control even the most trivial aspects of everyone's lives, and the left is obsessed with how the right would rather selfishly spew plastic into the environment than to give up even the most trivial conveniences. This feels like a tension that can exist only in the Twitterverse. I really can't imagine pre-internet society actually having strong opinions about any of this.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
So is double packaging (eg plastic bottles wrapped in plastic to form a "sixpack", on a pallet, wrapped in more plastic, so plastic within a plastic within a plastic, prepackaged bananas, double packed cosmetics, toothpaste in plastic covered cardboard boxes, etc.), and it contributes a lot more (by weight of trash) than straws. But we have basically zero impact on the first, and drinks in a plastic bottle are sometimes literally the only choice, and no politician dares mention cocacola and walmart, but we all get blamed for straws that we maybe use twice a year... in mcdonalds.
layer8 5y ago
Straws are essential for drinks served with ice, in particular cocktails.
- nightfly 5y ago
  Definitely not "essential" for cold drinks
  - layer8 5y ago
    Since the ice cubes float on top, your nose and upper lip tends to bump into them otherwise. Maybe there’s some clever drinking glass design that could avoid that.

moron4hire 5y ago

And we don't even need straws. You can just drink from the rim of the glass at a sit down restaurant like you do at home, or a to-go drink could have a sippy lid like a coffee.

doubled112 5y ago
I can't be the only person that just does this when the drink comes with a paper straw.
- moron4hire 5y ago
  Unfortunately, as soon as they hand out the straw, it doesn't matter if you use it or not, it's going into the trash. So often the wrapper gets wet while it's sitting on the table and they just discard every paper product left on the table.
Larrikin 5y ago
Milk shakes, boba tea, thick smoothies, and similar drinks are all awful to consume without a straw. If an establishment insists on me using a paper straw with them, I'd rather just not order them.
- moron4hire 5y ago
  "Awful"? Isn't that a bit of an overstatement? Also, I get a milkshake maybe two times a year. Doesn't warrant every other drink normalizing on straw usage.
ajsnigrutin 5y ago
You don't need plastic bottles either... you can use glass ones... and a lot more plastic bottles are produced and thrown away than plastic straws... and they usually come with plastic labels, wrapped in plastic 6packs, on a pallet, wrapped in plastic wrap. You could easily replace that with a glass bottle in a reusable plastic crate. I've seen quite a few videos of flood waters carrying waste down some random (usually asian or african) rivers... didn't see a lot of straws there.

qiskit 5y ago

> Why is the world so obsesed with plastic straws? The world? It's just the media and virtue signalers who are obsessed. Far less than 1% of the population. Sadly, these people control the megaphone and makes it seem like "the world" is concerned. > [0] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/23/big-oi https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/23/big-oi... Hilarious. The virtue signalers' manifesto - "Personal virtue is an eternally seductive goal in progressive movements, and the climate movement is no exception." > "Citizens see themselves as part of civil society, as actors in the political system" Actors. Don't they just follow direction? Sounds about right. > "I have 100% clean electricity at home because people organized to make that option and the solar and wind power behind it available." And I can guarantee that her "clean electricity" mostly comes from burning biomass, natural gas, etc. I'd bet all my upvotes on that. > I do some of my errands by bicycle because the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition worked for decades to put bicycle paths across the city and otherwise make it safer to get about on two wheels. Just some? Why not all of the errands? > That vegan options are available at a lot of fast-food chains is because enough consumers have created a profitable market for them. Vegan options exist because wealthy industrialists want to feed people processed slop instead of actual food. The people aren't hankering for some in/anti-human diet. Billionaire industrialists who want to make more money by creating a new industry paid PR firms to push veganism to dull minds. Just like tobacco companies supported "women's equality" a century ago to breakdown the taboo on female smoking and sell more cigarettes. The author of that article is why we have paper straws. The problem with virtue signaling is that the ends are the pseudo-virtue, not actual good. A virtue signalers feels good because he gave a bum $100, even though the bum used the $100 to buy drugs and kill himself. The author of the article virtue signals even though she produces more carbon pollution than 99.99999999999999999% of the human population. Think about that.

resoluteteeth 5y ago

I think they were just seen as low hanging fruit since you can usually do without straws entirely but then eliminating plastic straws got hijacked as a way of selling alternate straws. So basically it's like most other attempts to make stuff more environmentally friendly in the US.

Tagbert 5y ago

It is a small thing, though I do get annoyed when going to a restaurant that they just automatically throw down straws for every drink. They don’t even make them something you can request, if needed. The assumption is that they are wanted. Once they are on the table they won’t take them back. I’ve tried to express this to the servers, but they just look at me like I’m a weirdo and then next time I go there they do the same thing again. We probably don’t need bans. Just get the restaurants to only provide straws upon request.