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Paper straws are often touted as alternative to plastic, but they're toxic
- mjamesaustin 2y agoI don't understand people's obsession with straws in general. I prefer my drinks without one – the mouthfeel of a glass is so much better than a straw.
- patmorgan23 2y agoWhile a lot straws get used at sit down restaurants that have real glasses. I suspect far more are used at fast food restaurants/drive throughs that use plastic or styrofoam cups
- markerz 2y agoYou might not be in the intersection that desires it. Some of my women friends use it to not mess up their makeup (lip stick, lip gloss) or transfer to their containers by accident. Others have sensitive teeth and can’t drink cold or ice water without it hurting, straws bypass the teeth. Boba is a particularly straw oriented beverage. While I think it’s reasonable to actively try and reduce straw usage, I’ve found many people who would reasonably continue to use them. -shrug-
- cholantesh 2y agoPeople with limited mobility and autism are also in the mix so it is not simply a matter of desire for many.
- reducesuffering 2y agoAcidic drinks like soda and citrus do corrode your teeth
- calini 2y agoI'll print a QR code of this on a T-shirt and wear it at every establishment ever that serves you paper straws. They're terrible.
- geor9e 2y agoHow often do you expect that QR code on your t-shirt to be scanned?
- lm28469 2y ago> It looked like we had found a solution to our plastic consumption issue... but maybe not If only there was a way to drink without using a straw
- gjsman-1000 2y agoPeople with disabilities, or elderly people, need straws. https://cdrnys.org/blog/disability-dialogue/grasping-at-straws-the-ableism-of-the-straw-ban/ https://cdrnys.org/blog/disability-dialogue/grasping-at-stra...
- quasse 2y agoI'm not an anti-straw crusader but I think this is a bit of a bad faith argument. People with various disabilities or age related also frequently require lots of other assistive devices but that doesn't imply that they need to be used as the default for every single consumer. My grocery store doesn't hand every shopper a wheelchair instead of a shopping cart just because some percentage of the population requires them.
- TylerE 2y agoMost groceries stores DO offer wheelchairs, either powered or manual, to their customers.
- recursive 2y ago> doesn't hand every shopper a wheelchair > DO offer wheelchairs You see the difference, right? We can do that for straws.
- ryandrake 2y agoBut they are not the default, and that's OP and OOOP's point. There's no reason 99% of the population needs to be served their drinks with a straw. Straws should be available for the 1% who need them for accessibility reasons and some (probably very small) group who prefer to use them for whatever reason. But they should not be the default.
- zug_zug 2y agoPFAs should be illegal in all food applications by now. The danger of PFAs isn't really new at this point. I'm sure if we really try hard we'd find hundreds of viable alternatives (e.g. wax? noodle straws? bamboo?), they just wouldn't have the same margin.
- quasse 2y agoI'm actually boggled that it's not illegal in things like food containers and eating utensils. I'm generally not a "trust the government to get things done" type of person but this seemed like such an obvious and easy political win considering how much air time PFAS has been getting in the last decade.
- dwallin 2y agoAssuming a US perspective, welcome to a world of unlimited corporate political spending (Thanks Citizens United). If you stick your head up to try to bring such a bill to the table expect your opponent next election season to come with a massive PAC-fueled war chest.
- gjsman-1000 2y agoThe article suggests stainless steel straws. Hell, no. All it takes is one trip on something walking out of the coffee shop, using a straw because of sensitive teeth, and I’m possibly dead or paralyzed. Paralyzed because of a stainless steel straw - all it takes is one time and the public will correctly reject the concept forever.
- internetter 2y ago> All it takes is one trip on something walking out of the coffee shop, using a straw because of sensitive teeth, and I’m possibly dead or paralyzed. Glass could do this to you just as easily.
- gjsman-1000 2y agoI’m really not seeing it. A rod of any kind in the mouth is very dangerous - as can be seen by the thousands of toothbrush injuries every year. Glass, unless it’s a wine glass, most likely just gives you a bunch of cuts. Might need surgery, but better than paralysis! Steel straws aren’t an option. All it takes is one kid getting a steel rod through their face, a $10 million ad campaign, and giving your child one will be likened to child abuse. This is easily foreseeable.
- TylerE 2y agoI've also never seen glass used in takeaway/disposable containers.
- surfingdino 2y agoFive Guys already sell them in the UK at their counters. You get a cardboard box, a stainless steel straw, and ... a steel & plastic brush to clean your straw. I wish I was kidding.
- throwup238 2y agoAll of the stainless steel straws I've seen come with removable silicone tips. Just use one with an angled tip if you're that scared of them.
- aetherson 2y agoWe should just use fucking normal plastic straws. This is environmental priority number 1,000,000, it just appeals to people instead of vastly more impactful interventions because roughly 50% of the environmental movement is looking for minor inconveniences that they can personally endure so they get a feeling of atonement.
- V__ 2y agoI think it's the other way around. Simple, cheap and visible 'solutions' make companies look green without having to actually do anything. That it inconveniences people is just a great benefit, so they can resist future change by saying: we would like to do more, but people don't want that.
- mc32 2y agoWhy don't companies come out and tell the truth rather than pretend to be doing something though? Like, straws in some countries end up disproportionately in streams, etc., but not in country X, moreover, plastic straw alternatives are worse due to a, b and c.
- soco 2y agoBecause they live out of lying to their customers? Doing the barely minimum and not even that, trying to get around any regulation which may benefit the customers, welcome to today's economy. I don't want to call it capitalism or socialism or whatever - because under any name, it's just a shit status we have - and we surprisingly seem willing to put up with.
- aeternum 2y agoYes, also no one considered the negative externalities in terms of public sentiment. Drinking through a floppy paper straw is unpleasant and it leads to snarky comments and negative sentiment about environmentalism. The effect is not measurable and it was a knee-jerk reaction to a viral video rather than data driven. It acts as evidence that environmentalism has become mostly political rather than scientific.
- sleepybrett 2y agoboth products are toxic, but one biodegrades and the other doesn't.
- d_tr 2y agoOne degrades in your mouth and the other doesn't...
- sleepybrett 2y agoMaybe I haven't used ones like you have or perhaps I drink my drink fairly quickly compared to others, but I haven't really had this problem with paper straws in my area (they seem to be coated in wax). Certainly the portion in the drink can start to be soggy... but I'm the type of guy that isn't really interested in the drink after the ice starts to significantly melt.
- d_tr 2y agoThe paper ones I've been served drinks with have certainly been bad. OTOH I have used a couple of types of "biodegradable" straws, from mango peel or sugarcane or something, and they were 100% fine.
- dangus 2y agoI don’t like how the article recommends stainless steel straws. Those are a great way to cause damage to your teeth/mouth, especially for kids. Maybe we should treat straws as a wonderful accessibility product that most people shouldn’t use regularly. If you’ve ever bought a Starbucks iced drink you know that really the only beverage the company sells that needs a straw is a Frappuccino. All those years of selling straws and all Starbucks needed to do was put a properly shaped/size hole on the lid.
- u32480932048 2y agoYeah, I don't regularly use straws, but when I do, I just need/"need" a straw and really hate having an inferior straw. For whatever reason, I just really hate stainless steel straws. Not only are there much bigger priorities, but it's also ridiculous in some forms, and that creates another type of distraction from what actually matters.
- dangus 2y agoFor me personally I disagree with the idea that straw waste and biodegradability doesn’t matter. This overemphasis of “priorities” is a mistaken philosophy. Reduction of straw use matters just like the same as the reduction of any type of disposable use. Anything produced with the sole purpose of being discarded is an issue. Maybe we can make an argument that it’s a greenwashed lazy half-step to eliminate straws or provide less effective straws while still selling disposable cups, but at the same time it isn’t just one little plastic straw we are talking about here. A company like Starbucks that has over $20 billion in revenue…divide that by five bucks as a rough average cost of a drink and assume about 1/4 of their product sales are cold drinks and you’re looking at a company that would potentially be producing multiple billions of straws every year if they hadn’t eliminated them as a default inclusion. Imagine a billion straws in a room and how much material that would be. The sheer scale of many of these businesses and the human population itself is why very small steps like saving a bit of plastic on the screw cap of a soft drink or replacing straws with a hole in the lid make a huge difference to consumption and waste. I personally don’t think its productive to look steps like that with too much cynicism. On top of that the corporation gets to enjoy the cost savings so it’s really a win-win. Obviously companies shouldn’t pat themselves on the back and consider the job done but I don’t think the world becomes a better place if Starbucks hypothetically added straws back to the waste stream.
- RandallBrown 2y agoWhy doesn't this article mention compostable plastic straws? Some of them are like 90% as good as a regular plastic straws without any of the danger and cleaning annoyance of a metal straw.
- hbn 2y agoYeah I remember going to a Booster Juice (Canadian smoothie chain) after they banned plastic straws here, and saw they were proudly advertising their biodegradable straws, and upon trying one I was perfectly satisfied with it compared to a normal plastic one. I figured maybe it's not standard because they're expensive enough that it could only be justified when selling a $10 drink. Then the last time I went they had moved onto paper straws like everyone else.
- RandallBrown 2y agoThe biodegradable plastic straws are very common at fast food restaurants in the US in places with straw bans (Seattle for me). There are some issues with some of the brands, but generally they're fine.
- scottyah 2y agoI would really love to see a breakdown on how paper straws came to be. It seems that overnight after that Turtle video a lot of laws were passed, and paper straws (which I had never seen before) were flowing out of every place that sold drinks. It smells like a premeditated astroturf-driven regulatory capture campaign.
- OutOfHere 2y agoThe study is from 2023. It is not clear why the news article is a year late. The title should note 2023 anyway.
- multimoon 2y agoThere was so many priorities better to spend time on that were actually impactful before we got to “your straw may somehow circumvent the US recycling system and end up in the ocean” This was just virtue signaling so people could feel better about themselves.
- OutOfHere 2y agoDo not buy anything that requires a straw because the disposable cup you buy is very likely either made of plastic or is lined with bisphenols such as BPA. BPA exposure during pregnancy is even associated with causing permanent neurodevelopmental damage and autism.
- maeil 2y agoReposting this as a top-level comment because I'd really like to be enlightened. I truly have not been this confused by the comments on any HN post before and I've been reading this place almost daily for years. Is it completely the default to drink from a straw in the US? Let's say you're at a business lunch. People drink from straws? I just can't picture it. Or is it because people only order water or alcoholic drinks at such lunches? Do "fancy" places never serve any carbonated drinks whatsoever? Including something like "artisanal kombucha" or whatever they can ask a premium for? If they do, then are those always served with straws? I'm seeing reasons like hygiene, lipstick and so on. But I know that even in the US, plenty of people drink wine, and they definitely don't do so with a straw. And places serving wine must have a decent overlap with women wearing lipstick, statistically.
- jemmyw 2y agoYeah I think it's a US thing. It's surprising how vehement people are in the comments when you suggest they could drink without a straw. I was thinking back, I just went on a 2 week vacation in NZ and was eating out a lot. I ordered soda a couple of times and was never given a straw. The kids did get straws a few times with juice drinks. It's a cultural/learned thing but people don't realize that so they get cross about it, one way or the other.
- briandw 2y agoStraw Comparison Stainless Steel Straw - Mass: 15g - Energy: 900 KJ per straw (60GJ per ton of stainless) - Composition: 18% Chromium (Cr) 8% Nickel (Ni) 74% Iron (Fe) - Note: High chromium content, which can be hazardous Plastic Straw - Mass: 0.5g - Energy: 10 kJ (25MJ/kg for HDPE) 90 reuses needed to break even. Now include the energy for washing and the chance of losing the stainless one. Plastic looks like a winner here.
- difosfor 2y agoI recently got a bamboo straw in a drink and have to say that worked pretty well and can hopefully be made without pfas; just bamboo.