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Why pick straws though? There are plenty of similarly environmentally harmful and even less useful things that we ignore (like all the excessive nested packagin

Why pick straws though? There are plenty of similarly environmentally harmful and even less useful things that we ignore (like all the excessive nested packaging for some preprocessed food products).

qball 3y ago
>Why pick straws though? Because banning them is highly visible and enshittifies life in general (paper straws are fucking garbage and everyone knows this) without solving the actual problem (pollution should trend downwards). This makes environmentalists happy, because making life worse for everyone is their goal (actual progress on the problem means they lose relevance/social power and nobody ever destroys their own meal ticket); and it makes the greenwashers happy, because it makes most people think something's being done even when it isn't (and can continue to sell truthy solutions that feel good but don't work, plus the profit and power that comes from having massive capital stores in an economic context artificially driven to zero-sum with environmentalism as the excuse to impose it).
jeroenhd 3y ago
Banning straws has to be the tiniest, least impactful change we can possibly make to reduce unnecessary plastic waste. It's a perfect representation of how we're all doomed because nobody wants to give up the tiniest bit of luxury when it comes to attempts to fix global problems. I'm all for action against excessive packaging (as long as we don't cause food waste, i.e. by banning the plastic keeping fruits and vegetables edible for much longer) but nested plastics seems to be rather rare in my experience. Even sixpacks of cans come in cardboard packaging these days. It's been months since I last saw nested plastic packaging. I've never seen any law specifically targeting straws. Most of the laws target single-use plastics, such as plastic cutlery and plates. The people focusing on straws seem to be "the damn liberal environmentalist communists want to make your life worse" types of media.
- ffhhttt 3y ago
  > I've never seen any law specifically targeting straws Well.. come to Europe. But to be fair yeah, I think they banned most non biodegradable single use utensils. Straws just turned out harder to replace compared to plates and forks. The plastic coated paper straws which are just as bad (if not worse) in most ways are just a perfect illustration why this policy wasn’t thought out that well.
  - jeroenhd 3y ago
    Which law targeted straws specifically? The 2019 directive on single-use plastics (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2019/904/oj https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2019/904/oj) targeted a wide variety of single-use plastics related to food consumption.

Why pick straws though? There are plenty of similarly environmentally harmful and even less useful things that we ignore (like all the excessive nested packaging for some preprocessed food products).

qball 3y ago

>Why pick straws though? Because banning them is highly visible and enshittifies life in general (paper straws are fucking garbage and everyone knows this) without solving the actual problem (pollution should trend downwards). This makes environmentalists happy, because making life worse for everyone is their goal (actual progress on the problem means they lose relevance/social power and nobody ever destroys their own meal ticket); and it makes the greenwashers happy, because it makes most people think something's being done even when it isn't (and can continue to sell truthy solutions that feel good but don't work, plus the profit and power that comes from having massive capital stores in an economic context artificially driven to zero-sum with environmentalism as the excuse to impose it).

jeroenhd 3y ago

Banning straws has to be the tiniest, least impactful change we can possibly make to reduce unnecessary plastic waste. It's a perfect representation of how we're all doomed because nobody wants to give up the tiniest bit of luxury when it comes to attempts to fix global problems. I'm all for action against excessive packaging (as long as we don't cause food waste, i.e. by banning the plastic keeping fruits and vegetables edible for much longer) but nested plastics seems to be rather rare in my experience. Even sixpacks of cans come in cardboard packaging these days. It's been months since I last saw nested plastic packaging. I've never seen any law specifically targeting straws. Most of the laws target single-use plastics, such as plastic cutlery and plates. The people focusing on straws seem to be "the damn liberal environmentalist communists want to make your life worse" types of media.

ffhhttt 3y ago
> I've never seen any law specifically targeting straws Well.. come to Europe. But to be fair yeah, I think they banned most non biodegradable single use utensils. Straws just turned out harder to replace compared to plates and forks. The plastic coated paper straws which are just as bad (if not worse) in most ways are just a perfect illustration why this policy wasn’t thought out that well.
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  Which law targeted straws specifically? The 2019 directive on single-use plastics (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2019/904/oj https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2019/904/oj) targeted a wide variety of single-use plastics related to food consumption.