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Comment by bigstrat2003 | Hacker News Reader

bigstrat2003

> Everybody makes fun of paper straws.

Yeah, because they suck. Uh, pun not intended. Paper straws get somewhat soggy and feel bad in your mouth. They are inferior to the plastic straws they purport to replace, so people resist them as much as they can.

If you want to actually make a difference with an environmental effort, you need to make something superior. Nobody makes fun of LED light bulbs because (up front cost aside) they are wildly superior to incandescent. People actually like having LED bulbs and seek them out. The same cannot be said, and likely never will be said, of paper straws.

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Most paper straws use PFAS, meaning we’re actively composting PFAS in a fantasy effort to feel good about our waste without actually giving anything up

https://fortune.com/well/2023/08/24/paper-straws-harmful-for...

Thanks just the dystopian news I needed today.

What a stupid joke.

paper straws do not make any sense any way you look at it. Are we saying that we are okay to cut trees to make straws when we could make them out of petroleum ?

Moreover, paper straws are not even recyclable due to water content which makes them soggy. Plastic ones are almost 100% recyclable

Most importantly, unlike plastic straws, they are laced with glue and other chemicals which gets ingested.

Soggy is not a problem.Recycling paper involves wetting it to loose the fibres and then reforming it. It's how paper is made.

But usually paper and cardboard that has been in contact with food is not recyclable because it contaminates the batch. That's why pizza boxes also cannot go into the cardboard/paper fraction.

No, that's because pizza boxes are contaminated with fat. That messes up the paper recycling process. Water is fine.

Man, if that's the problem then I can only assume any fast food box is not recyclable too?

The point of paper fast food boxes is not to recycle them but to have no trash in the end as they just burn or rot, all in a sustainable way. In contrast to plastic.

> Soggy is not a problem.

It is when you're trying to suck a thick milkshake through one, though...

> Are we saying that we are okay to cut trees to make straws when we could make them out of petroleum ?

Uhh.. yes? Trees can be grown, just like any agriculture product.

> Plastic ones are almost 100% recyclable

In theory. However that rarely works out in practice, due to the complications of mixing various types of plastic in a single stream of garbage.

> Most importantly, unlike plastic straws, they are laced with glue and other chemicals which gets ingested.

The glue for paper straws will be a biodegradable water-based adhesive. It may be finished with natural wax. And that's it. I think you are intentionally spreading FUD saying glue and chemicals.

That being said, I hate paper straws. I like bamboo straws though.

Natural and biodegradable doesn't mean safe of human ingestion.

And made from petroleum with many interesting additives does mean safe for human ingestion I suppose?

Maybe. Safe of ingestion means we have to know what happens in the body. Some plastics just pass right through and are safe; some biodegradable things are good food for the body. Some biodegradable things degrade to something harmful, and some plastics do get absored into the body and are harmful.

> Are we saying that we are okay to cut trees to make straws when we could make them out of petroleum ?

It’s more okay to make things out of paper than plastic, yes. Plastic waste and microplastics are a huge problem. Trees are a renewable resource.

> Moreover, paper straws are not even recyclable due to water content which makes them soggy. Plastic ones are almost 100% recyclable

Plastic straws are almost never (literally never?) recycled. Paper straws are supposed to be fully biodegradable.

> Most importantly, unlike plastic straws, they are laced with glue and other chemicals which gets ingested.

But yes, this and the usability issue make the other points moot (n.b. leaching harmful chemicals is a concern that also applies to plastic straws and paper cups). The vast majority of existing straws should be replaced with no straw, and most beyond that with reusable straws.

> Plastic ones are almost 100% recyclable

Nope, that's a myth. Plastic is essentially unrecyclable. Some types of plastic can be made into "lower" quality types with lots of effort, but there is no circular reuse. The oil and plastic industries want to make you believe that this is all a solved problem, but it very much is not.

In contrast, paper and wood products just rot away at the end of their life, and a new tree grows in their place.

It's not a myth, you can make new items using recycled plastics. Of course, the recycled plastic doesn't have the same properties, but it doesn't mean that it can't be useful to reduce plastic production. Most plastic items do not require pristine materials anyway.

It's the same for paper and cardboard, and it's much better to reuse it as much as possible to avoid cutting a tree. Letting it rot releases the same amount of CO2 than burning it, by the way.

https://plasticsrecycling.org/how-recycling-works/the-plasti...

I'd argue it's kinda a myth, because I used to believe we could create a perfectly closed loop (you know, like the one the recycling symbol suggests) if only we could cleanly separate the materials (which in my imagination requires consumers to vigilantly separate the waste into dozens of different bins). I'm beginning to think I was wrong.

If 1kg of "recycled" plastics allow to reduce the production of 1kg of pristine plastics, it's already a big win, even if it's downcycling. No need to throw away the baby with the bathwater.

It is probably the only argument in favor of recycling. After the last six months exploring the recycling process what I get is this:

Reduce, reuse, recycle.

The order matter, recycling is useful but should be the last step when something has to be trashed away. In the case of our straws, buying a metal one would reduce and reuse much better than the two others solutions.

A problem is that we tend to only talk about recycling while forgetting the two others. It is easy to talk about how many tons has been recycled while it's very difficult to quantify the reduce reuse practice and not very appealing for sellers either.

The vast majority of paper products made from farmed trees (because if you're pulping it anyway you can use really fast growing wood), meaning the CO2 you release from burning/composting paper straws is offset by the next tree planted to replace it.

Excess CO2 in the atmosphere is driven by burning fuels that aren't being actively produced via recaptured atmospheric CO2, such as petroleum.

And the fundamental issue with recycling plastic is that the raw ingredients for virgin plastic are basically free as a byproduct of fuel petroleum extraction. If I want octane, hexane, methane, propane, etc. for fuel, I'm also going to be pulling up and separating out ethane, which is a very quick steam crack and catalyzed polymerization away from polyethylene.

Tree farming has a major environmental impact and degrades natural environments, wildlife and soils. A tree farm is not a forest at all.

Some products such as cotton are even more destructive, which is why the cotton tote bag is an environmental absurdity and the plastic equivalent is much better.

Plastic does not have to be 100% recyclable for it to be economically viable. However, plastic straws are so small that I'd think most of them get tossed anyway.

Isn't this a bit like "paper" cups for coffee / water? We switched to these at work a few years ago, and it's an all-round horrible experience.

I swear every other one leaks right away, and those that don't can only be refilled once or twice before they do. So you end up going through like 10 of those a day. I also don't know how "eco-friendly" they actually are, since there's a picture of a dead turtle on them under a text to the effect of "don't throw out in nature".

I guess on the plus-side, our company at least provides ceramic cups to their internal employees. But since it's the employees' responsibility to clean them, not everybody is off the disposable cup train.

> I swear every other one leaks right away, and those that don't can only be refilled once or twice before they do. So you end up going through like 10 of those a day

Yeah, if you're using that many, the solution is, and always has been, to get a proper reusable cup (ceramic, glass, whatever).

Right, but this just shows why these policies don't work in practice. People will just use 10 paper cups which are free, rather than cart around a big ceramic one.

Especially in situations where people don't even have an assigned spot in the office anymore, it's not exactly shocking that many will choose the easier route.

My company told everyone to bring their own mug, which they were expected to wash from time to time. Then they give mugs for "thanks for working here" awards once in a while so they can be sure everyone has one. Soap and a sink are provided near the coffee makers.

Paper cups are still provided, but it is intended visitors not people who work in the building.

But do people actually use them? That's the theory where I work, too, but most people just use paper cups.

> Nobody makes fun of LED light bulbs because (up front cost aside) they are wildly superior to incandescent.

There's burgeoning movement called "PWM sensitive"[1] that's opposed to (cheap) LED lights.

[1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/PWM_Sensitive/

The frequencies that they claim affect them are disputable but the flickering in some cheap LED lights is real. Badly/cheaply designed electronics can have flicker as bad as 50 Hz if they use half bridge diode rectification only (e.g. that time I was passing through Geneva airport and the Christmas lights flickered in my peripheral vision)

yep, i had one led stripe with a controller with a flickering that was kinda invisible to the eye, but very noticeable on camera.

I'm convinced paper straws are a psy-op by the plastics industry to make us hate environmentalists.

Or 4D chess by the environmentalists so we go without straws entirely

Classic replacement of something good with something terrible so customers opt out

No it's to punish us when it isn't us causing the alleged plastic problem. When the orders went out all the western media took holidays to the far east to film garbage filled rivers in india, the philippines, indonesia. Your disposable plastic straw wasn't ending up there. Your plastic bottle might have been but that's only because of the recycling scam. It should have been burned like the oil it is.

> Nobody makes fun of LED light bulbs because (up front cost aside) they are wildly superior to incandescent

There was huge resistance to wiping out the inefficient bulbs in the UK. Many many people stockpiled them.

At switching time, the affordable option was compact fluorescents. Which did suck.

I don't understand the moaning and bellyaching about straws. Are people that bad at drinking from cups? If you aren't a toddler or bed-ridden patient in a hospital (EDIT: or anyone else with physical conditions that necessitate a straw) you should be able to drink without a straw.

Mouth cancer. I can live a normal life EXCEPT I can't allow liquids to touch my lips. Without straws I have to go through agony just to be minimally hydrated. Paper straws get stuck to my necrotic flesh and tear it off.

There are a variety of conditions that straws are helpful for. A lot of people have health issues that make it difficult to swallow. A lot of people have mouth and lip conditions.

What I don't understand is all the moaning and groaning about the smallest piece of plastic that helps a LOT of disabled people have a semblance of normalcy, when here are much larger plastic fish to fry. We use plastic for basically everything but people have tunnel visioned on a minor piece that actually helps people. It's myopic.

I thought "bed-ridden patient" covered everyone who is physically unable to drink without straws due to disabilities or other conditions. I guess that wasn't clear enough though. My apologies. I've edited my comment now.

> What I don't understand is all the moaning and groaning about the smallest piece of plastic that helps a LOT of disabled people have a semblance of normalcy

You have to admit it's been turned into a culture war point by people who mostly don't need straws. They just need boogeymen to rile up people against environmentalism in general.

>Are people that bad at drinking from cups?

You ever had the ice in the bottom of the cup turn into a large chunk then hit you in the face?

It's exactly the same as for reducing cars in city centers, suddenly almost everyone driving a car is a crippled old lady with 3 children to drop off. When the reality is roughly 1.2 heathly humans per car on average doing a 4km trip for which a convenient alternative exists.

If a straw is a necessary tool for someone to function, I bet you they carry a metal one in their bag.

Good that they suck, people might realize that they may as well refuse the straw, drink from the glass and that their life is exactly as comfortable as before the ban.

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