EU Proposes to Ban Plastic Straws, Stirs, and Cotton Buds | Hacker News Reader

EU Proposes to Ban Plastic Straws, Stirs, and Cotton Buds

nytimes.com

33 pointsvincvinc25 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17172584

Over 90% of ocean plastic waste is from 2 rivers in Africa and 8 rivers in Asia. This is an infrastructure/development problem, banning plastic items in the developed world is myopic.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/nov/05/terrawatch-t...

I’ve been so annoyed with all these show politics and people buying into it since forever. It’s as if no one ever asked themselves, “but wait a minute, when I throw plastic away in the garbage, how would it end up contributing to the plastic soup?”

Yes, but this is both a global problem and a local one. Not all plastic waste travels long distances, and certainly isn't a global problem in the Mediterranean or Baltic. It is still worth Europe limiting plastic waste, even if no-one else does anything.

In the end, for the open oceans, it requires everyone to act. This is not sufficient, but it's still a good start.

The justification is complete nonsense. The claimed goal is to reduce the amount of plastic that ends up in the ocean. But I fail to see how the straw used to drink a cold chocolate in a restaurant in Vienna could ever end up in the ocean. So the basic premise does not seem to be very well-reasoned. Maybe I'm cynical, but I cannot get rid of the suspicion that this law is mainly about virtue signalling. It seems to be designed to maximize PR impact: they chose a topic that everyone agrees with (saving the environment), that everyone understands, and that does no serious harm to any politically powerful entity. Well done, micro-managing overlords of the European Commission!

Just because your properly-disposed straw in Vienna won't end up in the ocean doesn't mean the bill doesn't accomplish its goal of reducing ocean waste. It just means the bill has wider-reaching impact than its stated goal.

If that wider-reaching impact is, more generally, to reduce plastic waste as a whole... then I'd say this is great.

Given the amount of people who think like you, though, I'm quite glad the EC is micromanaging. Reason is hard to come by.

The problem is that by micromanaging, the commission violates the principle of subsidiarity. This is not the first time and I generally don’t have much trust in anyone who disregards his own stated principles whenever convenient.

I suspect that plastic straws are used in more places in EU than Vienna restaurants.

I never understood outright bans on stuff like this. Why not tax these products enough to price-in their externalities?

I'm all for eliminating plastic cotton buds. They're too flimsy to really do anything of value anyway. The rolled-paper stemmed cotton buds are by far the superior product, and better for the environment, apparently. Better yet are Japanese bamboo ear picks. If you really want to scratch your brain from ear to ear, those are the way to do it.

What are cotton buds?

Q-tips

Q-tips: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_swab

AKA cotton swabs or "Q-tips". (Except the brand-name product is made with a rolled paper stem, not the plastic type that's under threat.)

I've been using disposable paper-stem cotton buds for a while, for the simple reason that they are flushable (or so it says on the box; some people disagree). Glad to see plastic ones on their way out given the superior alternatives.

They're definitely not flushable in the UK. Please don't flush them if you're in England.

Sewage systems are not garbage disposal. They're an important public health system to remove faecally contaminated waste away for treatment.

There are tests for "flushable", and paper stemmed cotton buds don't pass those tests.

https://www.water.org.uk/policy/environment/waste-and-wastew...

Here's a PDF of a protocol. https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web...

Thanks for the info! That's all interesting. I'm not in the UK, no; I recall similar warnings there when I was.

Sigh. Its quite depressing to see Americans rely on brand names rather than the original meaning of the word.

It would almost make you want to take an Advil.

Was your entire post just a very cheap excuse to bash Americans?

Why would it be "quite depressing" if Americans call them Q-tips or "cotton buds" or any number of a dozen other things.

I'd say the entire post was probably an attempt at a joke, given the use of brand-name Advil.

It's mostly regional variation rather than brand names. American English almost always uses "cotton swab" as the generic term while British English today uses "cotton bud" more often. Overall "cotton swab" appears to be the most common English term.

Given that "cotton bud" appears to be a relatively recent British quirk (gaining popularity in the last couple decades), I would submit that "cotton swab" is the original and proper generic term.

British English: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cotton+swab%2C...

American English: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cotton+swab%2C...

English overall: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cotton+swab%2C...

(Refresh the page if the graph doesn't load at first.)

I was referring to the use of the brand name 'Q Tip'.

If the OA had said "cotton swabs" we would have known what it meant. Don't be a dick.

We need to eliminate all the single use plastic objects. This is a good first step.

Plastic chopsticks and disposable plastic lunch boxes.

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