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Next time, please try to think what is the point of making a post. This one, for example, is an attempt to help someone realize their perspective is useful to share if it can be done in a manner consistent with community guidelines.
Hope you have a nice day :).
A lifetime of avoided plastic straws will then be instantly cancelled out due to the absolute mountains of plastic waste necessary to provide healthcare treatment. Oh, and you also gave the person cancer or ruined their health.
You can already see the early signs - not that there will be political or media will to admit that their moronic approach is moronic:
https://cen.acs.org/environment/persistent-pollutants/Biodeg...
https://www.foodpackagingforum.org/news/contamination-found-...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00456...
And I'm only talking about the unnecessary disease caused in humans, not to mention what will probably be the environmental impact of adding new forms of chemical contamination to the ecosystem, some of which are of the with-us-for-a-long-ass-time variety. Unlike plastic straws, we are adding this in a dissolvable medium, which also seems like a particularly bad idea.
I do think the metal straws are a good idea though, they're just incredibly hard to clean. And of course, if you care about this stuff you should be avoiding all take out and disposable cutlery/tableware.
Ironically enough it seems every time we find a new approach to minimizing pollution it usually comes in the form of inconveniencing ourselves, despite the fact that individual pollution is relatively minuscule as compared to the pollution committed by global industry. The paper bag to plastic bag conversion has just ended up creating a separate issue, and this same trade off seems to exist across the board. I guess there really isn't a way to have our cake and eat it too. The real solution is stricter environmental laws regarding industry, who have profiteered off of a total disregard for the environment for decades, not making everybody drink through shitty (and likely poisonous) paper.
It truly is crazy how most of us have been gaslit into thinking that global pollution is largely a result of our own individual actions, and not the action of mega-corporations who operate independently of any concern for the environment. Sorry, I'm going to have to opt out of all of the idiotic soapboxing about how I'm the issue because I don't drive a hybrid while BP/Exxon/Oil Corp #53 plunder the Earth and produce magnitudes more pollution in a day than I could hope to make in 100 lifetimes. /rant
Are there places banning paper bags and requiring plastic bags? Every place I’m aware of eliminated single use plastic bags and makes you pay for paper.
I fully agree that industry is the primary culprit in our environmental problems but that absolve the rest of us from at least trying to do better.
Plastic bags were adopted in favor of paper largely because of cost, but companies also asserted moral superiority because they truly do use fewer resources, vastly less landfill. Especially when they are reused as bin liners or to pick up waste, plastic bags are vastly more environmentally friendly than any option.
To match one-time use plastic bags:
- polypropylene bags (most of the green reusable bags found at supermarkets) should be used 37 times
- paper bags should be used 43 times
- cotton bags should be used 7,100 times