Recently a friend went to the US for a couple weeks and he said "they still use plastic staws, that why they are a superpower and we're not".
It's a joke but depicts the reality of plastic usage.
It's a joke but depicts the reality of plastic usage.
Personally I carry my own metal straw around (especially for hot drinks…I’ve never understood people who drink hot drinks with plastic straws and I’d suspect whatever keeps a paper straw from not collapsing with hot drinks is likely to be something I don’t want in my system either) but am not sure if that’s a scalable solution? Is that what Europeans do?
Alternatively, of course, you just don’t use straws. Glasses exist…
This is what I do. Not sure why straws are so popular. I heard restaurants pushed them because it made people drink more/faster, but most places have free refills these days so that doesn't really make sense anymore.
What's hard about it? I seem to have no trouble.
At some point restaurants realized they could offer free refills as a competitive advantage, (or save labor and have customers fill their own drinks) and now everyone does it. At that point, straws were just something that was expected.
not using straws?
Now that I eat more fiber, from sprouted legumes, fresh fruits and vegetables, and microwaved-in-a-little-water root vegetables, I find I can go a lot longer without drinking water.
What percentage of people drink who drink beer or wine drink it with a straw?
What percentage of people who drink sugary beverages use straws, and why the difference?
Plastic bags, plastic cups, plastic cup lids, styrofoam, plastic packaging, plastic candy wrappers, etc, frankly speaking, the average consumer does not give a shit about what these things are made of. Which is also to say, the average consumer would not mind at all if any of these things were required to be renewable. These are all things a manufacturer, restaurant, supplier, etc cares about, they are the ones on the hook for solving the problem of making these renewable, they are the ones who are usually impacted by most bans like this.
But plastic straws are something that the average consumer does care about, they stick this into their mouth, it effects the quality of their meal. For people with certain medical conditions, all their meals must be consumed through these things. When you ban plastic straws you push a bunch of neutrals off the fence.
Plastic straw bans don't effect the usual industries, so bans are naturally going to be easier. I'm sure that plastic straw manufactures would be upset, but largely speaking the usual lobbyists for this kind of thing are unlikely to care. This deceives environmentalists into thinking this is a low hanging fruit. So legislation is passed, consumers get pissed, and now the people who care about the environment are less likely to get re-elected.
Was it worth it?