SPOTLIGHT: Banning plastic straws is the latest trend.
BIG PICTURE: Here in Canada, the city of Vancouver has outlawed disposable drinking straws as of June 2019.
The European Union is talking about doing the same. Greenpeace thinks they should be curtailed in Australia.
As I’ve previously explained, these measures have no hope of cleaning up the ocean since the vast majority of trash polluting it comes from impoverished countries in Asia and Africa with no waste management systems.
Ten-year-olds may believe they’re saving turtles and seabirds by banning straws, but that’s wishful thinking. Nothing will seriously change until the garbage disposal problems of the third world are addressed.
If the litter is a concern along our coastlines, let’s do a better job of addressing littering. But let us not insult each other’s intelligence by pretending that banning straws will significantly reduce the total trash ending up in landfills.
Straws are small and weigh nothing. As a percentage of the overall refuse we produce each year, they’re trivial. Less than a rounding error.
The problem with these kinds of environmental crusades is that the crusaders believe they’re on the side of the angels. It doesn’t occur to them that their campaign might have unintended consequences – that real people might get hurt.
Vancouver was recently described as “the most ‘Asian’ city outside Asia.” Its ban will adversely affect the numerous small businesses who sell wildly popular Asian bubble tea, as well as thick milkshakes.
“Change like this can be costly,” says the president of a Restaurant and Food Services Association. Why increase costs for no discernible benefit? Why interfere with private businesses (be they successful or marginal) minus a compelling reason?
Then there are the sick and the disabled. Near the end of her long battle with breast cancer, the only way my mother could manage to drink was through a straw.
People with a range of disabilities also need them. One woman who is incapable of holding a cup told a newspaper that no straws were available in three establishments she visited recently, and that the staff was decidedly non-apologetic. From her perspective, her already difficult life is being made more so:
We’re really kind of viliyfing [sic] people who need straws or forgetting about them completely – let’s be honest – in encouraging shaming people who are asking for them.
Another woman, confined to a wheelchair, suffers from a disease that affects her ability to swallow. The same newspaper article reads:
“Are straws then going to be something you buy at a medical supply store? And as soon as you do that they become more expensive and they become less accessible,” says [Vancouver’s Gabrielle] Peters, on a fixed income of disability benefits she estimates at $1,100 per month. “You’re just adding that cost to me.”
TOP TAKEAWAY: Banning plastic straws in affluent countries has no realistic chance of improving the state of the ocean. But these bans are making life worse for small business people, sick people, and the disabled.
Read more at BigPicNews
Not seeing a lot of alternatives being suggested here. Apologist central.
So because other countries dont make a start with plastic solutions we shouldn’t? Sure…the banning of straws is a high profile bone thrown out there to assuage the mounting pressure.
I wonder where these plastics might be made? That is my place to start. Ban all production of plastics with a life of say 10+ yrs which are not biodegradable. Things such as single use straws, bottles, cups 1 yr. Doing nothing is not an option.
It is not only the UK, which is importing wood from the US. Many other EU countries (among them Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands) are doing it to reach their renewable target. Some data from the US:
https://www.trade.gov/topmarkets/pdf/Renewable_Fuels_Biomass_Wood_Pellets.pdf
The last few years of her life my mother was only able drink out of straw. I’m sure this is very common.
I’ll address the issue of litter because that is the only possible real problem banning straws and address in developed countries. I’m in a club that does highway clean up on a section of Highway 2 in Washington. If you want to control litter by banning physical objects, then it should be cigarettes. That is by far the most common litter. It is amazing that some people who would never dream of littering think nothing of tossing their cigarette butt.
We find a tremendous variety of litter. There are some straws and some plastic cups. There is also the wrapping of food bars, small food containers such as potato chips, and a lot of paper in different forms. We also find pieces of cars and sometimes clothing. Banning just the plastic is not going to cure the little problem. What is needed is changing the behavior of those that litter.
Stock up on drinking straws! Carry one in your shirt pocket, just to agitate the busy bodies.
I was annoyed when supermarkets started collecting a nickel per plastic bag, and the enviro snobs waving their righteous green cloth bags around. I’ve started using cloth bags myself, because the 5 cent bags got too thin. Somebody’s making money on them.
I can still remember Wax Paper Straws in Grammer School the Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse Brands but that still means chopping down trees to make them and we all know how much cutting down trees makes the Eco-Wackos weep and snivel
Not if you are cutting down trees to ship across the Atlantic to burn in an English power plant.
Sure,,,, ban plastic straws, but continue to dump raw sewage into the ocean.
Unbelievable……………
Just like with DDT CFC’s and other manmade stuff the Greens want it all banned the facts that Greenpeace wants to ban Chrolrine and this thing about Plastic Straws is just a drop in the bucket about just how stupid these modern Eco-Wackos are like Al Bore with the Internal Combustion Engine