If platic reduction is that important, the primary goal should be the primary platic consumption, not useful tools to normal people that maybe contributes 1-2% and will end up pissing people off.
The green movement is really bad at convincing people because they ignore private jets for politicians that cause more environmental damage than any lifetime consumption of plastic straws ever would. The hypocrisy is unconvincing.
If one were to ask plastic straw or bag ban volunteers to go work on something else, they just... wouldn't. This would be different with employees but with volunteers there are rarely significant tradeoffs to consider.
A search engine would show that there this movement is not ignoring private jets. [1]
Lastly, perhaps this is not true of the parent commenter, but a last thing I'll note is that many people seem to believe that the, "green movement," is somehow powerful or well financed. This could not be farther from the truth.
The money most environmental orgs brings in from donations is dwarfed by what those same donors pay for gasoline, red meat, and other environmentally harmful products. Some percentage of these purchases is then funneled to fighting the causes that they just donated to. (Dear child commenters, I'm not shaming you for eating meat or buying gas. I also live in a society...)
That’s the, "green movement." We're out-gunned, under-financed, and, due to those constraints, almost impossible to coordinate. I personally am currently struggling to figure out how to afford per-seat pricing of password managers for my team of 5-10 hr/week volunteers. THAT is the level of shoestring budget that this movement is on.
Perhaps it’s counter-intuitive, but if you’d like to see a more coordinated environmental movement capable of weighing tradeoffs and focusing on big issues over plastic straw bans, I’d suggest donating, not just once, but repeatedly. Otherwise, the fundamental dynamics of volunteer based orgs just won’t change.
[1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=environmentalists+block+jets
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/the-last-straw-footage-of...
I'm not sure if people are intentionally misrepresenting this, but it wasn't about the total amount of plastic used or climate change.
It's more similar to the old can ring plastic that became a meme for it's danger to wildlife.
The old pic of a sea turtle with a deformed shell with a new-looking 6-pack rings around it convinced me to tear apart those rings for more than a decade, then someone pointed out how new the 6-pack rings looked and I felt like an idiot. I learned never to trust enviromentalists.
Paper has it's downsides too, but they are surmountable. Plastic has no path forward at this stage. Recycling and incineration are not ideal for plastic, and you can't trust the general population with that task anyway.
Recycling is a cop out for big corps to keep pushing plastic into the environment. We need their products to live, but only they can choose to stop using plastic. Voting with our wallets is hampered by the reduced comptition from corporate amalgamation of staple grocery companies.
You can't call it a capital M monopoly, but the effect seems to be the same. The evidence is on the store shelves, even though the public clearly wants less plastic, no change.
Those are two pretty big "ifs" - people can be inclined to satisfice and pat themselves on the back for having done some minor symbolic thing, and then not go deeper. And it's much easier to sacrifice plastic straws than question whether your "bucket list" should really have a ton of carbon intensive global travel.
All we need is a seemingly copacetic catch phrase to bring the ocean-dumping not-recyclers into the light.
"Scamcycling"?