Santa Barbara approves jail time for straw ban violators
sfgate.com
sfgate.com
If "hundreds of thousands" means 500 thousand, then this is saying that 0.00027% of those plastic straws are found on coastlines.
I understand that there are problems with both of those statistics, but it still seems a bit odd to publish them like this (there are 13 words between those numbers).
Again, the "500 million" number is likely wrong (as OP references, [1]) and the "hundreds of thousands" number was probably the author taking a spitball at something that there aren't real statistics for, but they still chose to print it.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/business/plastic-straws-b...
EDIT: In reference to [1], being within an order-of-magnitude is pretty impressive for a 9-year-old.
https://www.keyt.com/news/santa-barbara-s-county/the-last-st...
Like Seattle's job tax once you get serious attention on something, not to mention the teeming hordes of trial lawyers drooling at the opportunity to sue Santa Barbara Council for ADA violations, the idea is going to die a quick death.
They would have gotten away with it without all those people blowing it out of proportion...