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Comment by ALLTaken | Hacker News Reader

Oh my god, I didn't know it's on most food wrapping. So when I get a coffee to go it's also a PFAS that seals the paper from the fluid?

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And it's on the inside of those shitty new papers straws.

Blows my mind, we've replaced relatively inert pieces of plastic with paper coated in this PFAS stuff and we're acting like it's good for us and the environment.

plastic straws were a rounding error on a rounding error of plastic waste.

Straws should be avoided instead of making alternatives.

What about metal straws, reusable and dont break

Feels bad on the teeth and is a good way to lobotomize yourself if you trip

And enormous embodied energy. They are not any better for the environment unless you use a metal straw for like 10 years

This is what we get when we make decisions based on panicked masses and noise they generate in the news. That banning plastic straws made zero sense, and was actually counterproductive to humanity's survival in general (distracting from and confusing people about climate change), was obvious to anyone who paused to do some basic math. But people who kept panicking each other about it didn't, and people making the decisions seemingly didn't either (or they did, and went through with it anyway, just to shut the "environmentalists" up).

I fear the same will be the case here - I mean, the very term, "forever chemicals", is already a clear giveaway that the topic is discussed and reasoned about in nonsensical categories. Occasional scientific paper that tries to navigate around this term won't help when the overall discussion is consumed by magical thinking.

Straws are easy low hanging fruit that make individuals / consumers feel guilty and like they're doing a good thing, it does not have a measurable impact on the environment.

>plastic straws were a rounding error on a rounding error of plastic waste.

Not as a percentage of “outrage”. We know who pushes for this stuff, and for some reason they just keep going with it.

I’m pretty convinced things like straw ban are a test to evaluate the demographics of “true believers” out there.

I don’t think it was ever thought that PFAS would coat alternatives.

I don't think it was ever thought at all. It was a device to find out who was with them, and to denounce the "anti-science bigots" who were against them.

What device? The ban itself? I seriously doubt it was made as a purity test with no social reward… it’s a pretty easy argument to understand as a stepping stone towards pollution concerns.

It’s like complaining about crumbs on the floor of a house filled with garbage. It’s missing the forest for the trees. Plastic straws have nothing to contribute to the problem that supposedly motivated the reason to ban them

For me the problem is the prevalence of one time use cups, plates and so on, it may be almost ok if you want something to go (but should be incentivized to use a reusable cup), but to have it when you are eating at a restaurant is like an ode to our idioticy

> "the problem is"

That's not actually a problem statement though right? That's just things that might be contributing to a problem. We have to first settle on what the problem is before we can start focusing on what the contribution is. I could be wrong but what I've heard communicated as the three main problems with plastics are greenhouse gas emissions in their construction, Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and PFAS.

Do straws or one time use cups/plates etc contribute to global greenhouse emissions? Seems doubtful as transportation and agriculture seems like the largest contributors and straws/plates/cups etc are a tiny fraction of the contribution for plastics themselves.

Do they contribute to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? IIRC that's the motivating scenario for the plastic straw ban and yet. And yet [1].

> the patch is mostly abandoned fishing gear

That's for the larger items. The majority of the plastics themselves is microscopic. And no, AFAIK it's not from land plastics that are leeching into the ocean & certainly not straws AFAIK.

Do they contribute to PFAS? Maybe but given the prevalence of PFAS everywhere I'm going to guess that it's in the noise compared to other sources (& as I've learned in this thread, getting rid of plastic straws has converted inert ones into PFAS emitters).

[1] https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/great-paci...

See origin story here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/07/18/anti-straw-mo...

I believe people picked up on this 9 year old’s proposition as a symbol for needless waste that stays around forever in large quantities. There are many simultaneous efforts to reduce plastic going on: some are trying alternative methods for producing it (bio plastics), some encourage the use of alternative materials (eg bamboo plates), others ban it outright (plastic bags in SF), and try to not have it offered by default (the origins of the straw bans).

I don’t see the flaw in doing all of the above simultaneously. The problem is real and obvious, and given how embedded plastic is in our lives, we need an “all of the above” approach to change.

I mean when the replacement is using PFAS, I don’t see how you’ve actually improved anything. Arguably you’ve made it astronomically worse for a previous problem that was in the noise of any real issue.

Well it certainly wasn't made to help the environment.

What would make you say that?

Because it does the opposite. PFAS leeching into us and groundwater is exponentially worse than inert plastic straws.

"Helping the environment" does not just begin and end at banning things.

I would accept that logic from a well meaning child, but not a serious adult.

The obvious questions to any reasonable person would be, how much does this actually help the environment, what alternatives are there, and what might be the consequences of doing this. Banning straws never even got close to having good answers to any of these, and yet you were a dumb greedy redneck who hated the environment for pointing it out.

It's clear where the value for this came from, and that was as a tool to bash political opponents with.

Do you really not examine costs and benefits when you think about what motivates people?

"No straw" is a much simpler and better solution than "mushy cardboard straw".

Ultimately, that's the route Starbucks went --

-- with their plastic cups.

I don't use plastic straw at all and I think it isn't even hard. We can always pour liquid in clean glass if required.

I mean that's the obvious answer, but there's a culture (mainly in the US but elsewhere too) that drinks should be taken on the go / while driving instead of just sitting down. I mean straws are a side-effect of an established practice of take-out meals & drinks and avoiding doing (or paying for someone to do) dishes.

Make coffee at home. Sit down for a meal. Make food at home. Make time to do these things. Which is easier said than done, granted - they're big cultural and political shifts that require things like affordable housing and living wages.

Getting rid of straws is easier than giving people a living wage.

Why would anyone ever drinks coffee from straw?

Hot black coffee, no. I suspect they’re referring to coffee-flavored drinks. The kind of thing you see at Starbucks, which are more like milkshakes with a touch of coffee. But even iced coffee is generally drunk through a straw.

Plus, let's be realistic here, it's not like westerners are responsible for plastic in the oceans. More than 80% of all plastic pollution is coming from a handful of rivers in Asia [0].

According to our political elites, getting our children to ingest hormonal disruptors will somehow solve this issue.

[0] https://www.statista.com/chart/25005/riverine-plastic-emissi...

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