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Comment by pg314 | Hacker News Reader

> but has imposed huge and everyday annoyances on everyone

Not on everyone. I can't remember the last time I used a straw, I manage to drink from a glass or a cup just fine. Is it really a huge annoyance for you? I understand that for some people (e.g. people with Parkinson's or a broken jaw) straws are a necessity, but most people should be able to manage just fine without them.

It's true that there are bigger contributors to plastic pollution, but it's hard to argue that plastic straws in the oceans or nature are a good thing.

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We could play this game with almost every product... I am sure there are many things that you use and like to use that I never use, but it isn't fair for me to just say, "Well it isn't important to me so that means it isn't important to anyone". Almost every product we produce, people could 'manage just fine' without... we can always just point to a time before the thing was invented and say, "Look, people managed just fine without computers... they aren't a necessity, let's not waste resources making them" Unless a product has outsized environmental costs relative to other luxury items, I don't think we should get in the habit of having governments pick and choose which items are 'necessity' or 'luxury'.

If we are concerned about plastic waste, let's put a general tax on plastics to reduce their consumption across the board and let the market decide how to do that reduction, instead of picking and choosing which plastic products to ban.

While I don't think people need to justify using straws, I will go ahead and say straws are very important to me. I like cold drinks with ice in them, but I have cold sensitive teeth that hurt when I drink from a cup with ice and no straw. It is way easier to drink in a car with a cup, lid, and straw.

I simply prefer using a straw. Do you want to go through a similar exercise where you justify every single one of your consumption practices?

When they banned plastic straws in the EU, all of the sudden two reusable replacement products appeared on the market: Glass straws and stainless steel straws.

They are such an upgrade to plastic straws that I don't understand why we haven't been using them all along.

They're absolutely not an upgrade to plastic straws. I don't like the feeling of a hard material clanking against my teeth every time I take a sip.

I've switched entirely to glass straws, they are a huge upgrade from plastic. No sharp edges like plastic, won't collapse if you want to suck up something firm like a milkshake, takes up less storage since I only need to keep a handful around to cover various sizes. And they look much, much better to boot. Can't say I've had any issues with them clanking on my teeth, but I use straws for sipping, not chewing on.

How do you carry them when you are out? Are they breakable?

I don't like the taste of metal straws, so I bought glass ones. They are awesome, but like all glass things, they are incredibly hard and incredibly brittle. If you drop it, it might shatter, it might be fine. I own four, use them regularly, including occasional travel, and have only dropped one.

If that sounds like too much work for you, there are reusable plastic straws available.

Glass is breakable yes, and I use the glass straws at home so I can't really speak to carrying them around (I rarely eat out so never had a need to).

I live in the EU, and I have never seen a glass or stainless steel straw.

In Austria they sometimes sell them in supermarkets (in the special offer section of discounters like Hofer/Aldi).

You can get them in kitchenware stores (expensive ones from WMF, or cheap ones from Sewa), and even Ikea sells them.

If you've used them before - how do the sippy cups tend to work for you? I've always been curious how they are for folks with sensitive teeth.

I’ve tried my kids snippy cups before, but the flow rate is way too low for an adult.

Just to clarify: the sippy cups offered at Starbucks and the like are usually the sort intended for adults.

Nice try big government, but a tax will only increase prices for end consumers and will disportionately affected poor people while actually doing jack shit to reduce consumption.

Use the money from the tax to help poor people.

A tax is much more free market than a ban.

We have to deal with externalities somehow. If the price of damage to the environment isn’t priced in, the market will do nothing to solve it.

Competition will do the work—if my business deals with the tax by raising prices for consumers, your business can instead invest into R&D to figure out how to keep prices steady. Your business wins, and the consumer wins.

I use (used) straws a few times a year when getting a treat like a milkshake. Now every time I get a milkshake, I get either a tooth-chipping metal thing or a limp paper tube that breaks. You can't really drink a milkshake out of a cup, it's bizarre.

I dare you to find a less significant source of pollution in my day to day life that's more inconvenient to ban. Perhaps clothes pegs or shoelaces? The list is short.

I'm convinced that most people's ideas of "environmental action" is self-flagellation. i.e. "if we're all more miserable, it must mean we're sacrificing and making progress for the greater good"

We banned straws because everyone saw that picture of a turtle with a straw through its nose, meanwhile other countries are dumping millions of tons of plastic into the ocean that absolutely dwarfs the pollution plastic straws could ever hope to make. It's like both of your legs have just been cut off, you're bleeding to death, and someone puts a bandaid over a pin prick on your shoulder, and pats themselves on the back for saving you.

Is there a condition that prevents you from drinking milkshake from a cup directly? Or do you often find yourself walking while drinking and want to avoid spilling the drink on yourself?

Hav you ever tried? It just doesn't work very well. A lot of milkshakes begin to split pretty shortly after being made, part of the utility of the straw is to stir it up as you drink. It can be done, the experience is just a lot worse.

And don't forget the whipped cream! There's just not a good way to sip from something with a cream topping without getting am embarrassing face full.

I see, I never have cream toppings so maybe that's that...

I don’t use straws every day but I like them. They’re not a necessity by any means. No more than this web site, or computers, or reading novels are… But if you have very cool beverage with floating ice, it’s nice not too fight against the ice on your teeth.

We’re in the middle of a climate crisis and the war on plastic straws is emblematic of everything that’s wrong about our policies. We’re looking way to hard at something totally inconsequential.

Nobody's forcing you to drink from a straw if you don't want to. Chill.

In a lot of transactions straws are handed out regardless of the customer's desire - ditto for plastic cutlery with takeout/delivery.

For individual businesses the math is against conservatism. Failing to deliver cutlery and getting massive complaints (especially if they lead to politically charged boycotts) is the second most expensive option - the most expensive option is forcing customers to state their preference (and baked in preferences like those submitted by UberEats are small check boxes that users don't see and so restaurants often ignore). The cheapest option is probably just to put a straw jar somewhere on the counter, but then you'll tend to get complaints from employees/franchise owners about theft - while that theft is rare and inexpensive, it is very visible.

>handed out regardless of the customer’s desire

This, but for paper receipts! It blows my mind that the default everywhere I go is to print a receipt, then ask me if I want it. I never do. I am not expensing these two slices of pizza. I will not need to deduct this bottle of shampoo when I file my taxes.

And then the merchant prints a receipt for themself! As if the computer that printed the receipt couldn’t just save a record of the purchase to a database!

The miles and miles of receipts that probably get printed and then thrown away probably adds up to something nontrivial, it’d be such an easy win to only print receipts on request.

That's becoming pretty normal in my experience. A lot of places ask first if I want a receipt. And they're not just printing them anyway and keeping them or throwing them away, they just tell the POS system not to print it at all.

IMO the best reason to avoid receipts when you don't need them is because thermal paper is really nasty stuff.

I live in the 3rd biggest food delivery market in absolute terms, with the per capita size being bigger than the top 2. Here UberEats is not a thing and one local player has the majority market share.

> the most expensive option is forcing customers to state their preference (and baked in preferences like those submitted by UberEats are small check boxes that users don't see and so restaurants often ignore)

Every significant player in the food delivery market here has their app work the exact same way: there is a clear, big checkbox for "I don't need cutlery". It's impossible to miss if you've used the app more than once, I'm sure people missed it the very first week it was introduced but now it's standard, everyone knows about it. Check the box? Restaurants don't send cutlery. Simple as that. Want to hear something even crazier? I'm pretty sure the checkbox is checked by default, so if you don't uncheck it, you don't get cutlery (not 100% sure because it may just default to whatever you chose on your last order).

This is just not a problem whatsoever. I'm sure by now it has already saved millions of pieces of plastic.

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