Yes, the US is a country that cannot process its own waste so it ships it overseas just to be rid of it. The solution is not to raise money and send it to the Philippines to build landfills. The solution is to actually recycle plastic, build circular supply chains, and use biodegradable materials as much as possible.<p>If humans are to stay on this planet, in the long term we cannot just keep piling up garbage in landfills and building on top of it. Eventually, in hundreds or thousands of years we will have to remediate that land. Its going to be a lot better if we just make our waste as recyclable as possible in the first place.<p>The author is recommending a half measure based on the assumption that the US cannot fix its own problems. They are also implying a false equivalency: banning single use plastics is not the same as recycling plastic. A more equivalent comparison might be the tradeoffs between plastic bottles for soda, water, or oils and glass or metal containers. It is also true that plastic straws are a much smaller problem then other usages of plastic such as bottles or event fishing gear and even bags.<p>Yet there is nothing inherently wrong with reducing plastic usage. Doing so is smart and will be important for the health and well being of future generations -- human and nonhuman -- of life on earth.
Plastic gets a bad wrap. But it's a <i>pretty dang</i> efficient material. It takes so little energy and material to make something very functional and resilient. I know that CO2 analyses of the replacements to plastic bags and straws has not been very kind to them.<p>I find it commendable to encourage people to consumer less stuff, but the war on plastic straws has been a huge step back - it's done relatively little to actually help, but has imposed huge and everyday annoyances on everyone. These should be the exact opposite goals of environmental reforms when there are much lower hanging fruits available.
The author is conflating two separate issues.<p>Their main point is at the end:<p>> Banning plastic straws is stupid.<p>They're probably right that throwing out plastic straws is better than throwing them in the recycling, assuming that plastic straws can't be efficiently recycled. That being said, many US recycling utilities typically sort the recycling on shore, and plastics that are too small to be efficiently identified and recycled (such as straws and loose bottle caps) will just be sent to the landfill regardless. How recycling is processed differs a lot across the country, so it's hard to make generalizations.<p>But that doesn't support their final conclusion about whether plastic straws should be banned. The author doesn't give a reason, but implicitly that they think paper straws suck, and must suck. Which a lot of the ones today do. But it's an odd hill to die on, given that basically all straws before 1960 were made of paper. Their ire should probably be directed at the establishments they frequent for buying cheap and terrible paper straws instead of spending a bit more to get good quality paper straws. Such companies probably want to get you pissed off by paper straws to demand that your government remind the ban so they can go back to using cheaper plastic straws.
If you want to save the oceans, ban plastic fishing equipment, as nets and other gear is the biggest plastic polluter in the oceans:
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/06/dumped-fishing-gear-is-biggest-plastic-polluter-in-ocean-finds-report" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/06/dumped-f...</a>
I don't think the answer is paper straws and I personally dislike them. They turn slimy from your saliva and usually collapse on themselves before you're done with using it. I normally end up taking multiple just to replace them halfway through drinking.<p>More companies could go in the direction Starbucks has gone, switching their iced drink cups to "sippy cup" lids to eliminate the need for straws while maintaining a lid all together. But that begs the question, is the sippy cup top more plastic than just a straw and the old lid?<p>Or why not just use the compostable plastic straws that are readily available rather than trying so hard to make your company look "green" by saving the turtles from straws that never end up in the ocean in the first place.<p>Seriously, fuck paper straws. They're up there with coke freestyle machines. Absolute trash.
Can someone please clarify for me why some communities in the West Coast of USA banned plastic straws but not plastic "take-away" cups (that are also used only once)? I want to understand the logic that was used to do this. I've googled around for this, and while people like pmarca mock it, I've never found the original reasoning and logic for this action.
It's a deceptive title, but it comes straight from the blog post. It's not going to teach you about straws (thankfully...are straws that interesting?). It tells you about the sources of plastic waste in general and justifies the most efficacious solutions to avoid plastic pollution. It is a short article focused on common sense, appropriate pictures, and well-chosen data.
> If you don't know the exact location where your plastic is recycled, throw it in the regular garbage instead.<p>Very interesting points they are raising. I reached out to <a href="https://recyclebc.ca" rel="nofollow">https://recyclebc.ca</a> to find out more about my local recycling org but from what I can find on their website almost all of the end product ends up in BC, Canada or at least North America. Same for the processing which seems to be local. I'll update with what I can find out and correct me if I'm wrong but those people saying everything gets shipped to Asia and dumped into the ocean aren't right, at least not universally. Here in BC at least that doesn't seem to be the case at all. If that's the case I'd really like to know why other places in first world countries aren't doing the same and I'd definitely consider the US a first world country.
I have a friend who is a quadruple amputee. For him straws are pretty good. For the rest of us, the solution to plastic straws is not straws. They aren't necessary.<p>Of course, it's all bike shedding anyhow. The real problems are big and complex and overwhelming, so we argue about straws instead.
I agree with the message, but some states, the type that ban plastic straws, have made recycling a requirement.<p>A message not touched on is reducing the amount of plastic that we produce and consume should be a goal, but with attention paid to the secondary effects. For example, if you don’t wrap those peppers in plastic they’ll spoil and that may be worse for the planet than shrink wrap. But what if you cover them in edible wax instead? Whats the footprint of each decision?<p>Sometimes plastic will win out and other times we are being wasteful. In SE Asia, when you buy a single drink from the convenience store, it comes within a plastic bag, and you always get a straw. A plastic bag and plastic straw for a drink in a plastic bottle.
Weird, first it says,<p>"[...] zero plastic thrown in a garbage can in the United States enters the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre", in bold letters.<p>But then later in the article, it admits that about 50% of US plastics (it is unclear whether is all of them or only the ones meant to be recycled) were shipped "to Indonesia and Vietnam, which proceeded to improperly dump over 80% of it."<p>So, it does go into the ocean in the end, whether the fault of the US or any other country, the point is that your plastic straw has a big chance of finding its way to the sea.
I do not understand why more restaurants do not have metal straws<p>They already have silverware and a whole process for cleaning it and whatnot. Why not just also invest in metal straws and re-use ? It seems like it would be cheaper than even plastic straws long term. And of course less waste.
Ironic that this does the same thing it complains about.<p>It 'solves' a tiny non-problem (US based plastic straw disposal) while actively damaging the bigger cause.<p>Apparently America can't recycle and the solution to that is to just give up? If Americans can't be trusted to recycle then I have no faith in them regulating landfills or any basic government function that doesn't involve blowing people up.<p>Maybe they should try recycling? Like actually doing it? Not intentionally messing it up like a grumpy teenager trying to get out of doing chores?
Went to McDonald's today to get a milkshake, they only have paper straws here since 2019 iirc. Anyways the milkshake itself doesn't but I assume our saliva "softens" the paper straw so much that after a couple of minutes I had to turn the straw around to use the other end otherwise I just can't get the milkshake through lol if that make sense. I'm thinking about getting 2 straws next time.
Reminder that a 9 year old came up with the number of 500 million straws, which would amount to every person using 1.6 a day: <a href="https://reason.com/2018/01/26/a-list-of-the-500-million-news-orgs-that/" rel="nofollow">https://reason.com/2018/01/26/a-list-of-the-500-million-news...</a>
The topic of landfill sites seems interesting.<p>What do they end up containing in the long run, after all the other material has been eaten or biodegraded? If we come back to a landfill site in two hundred years time is it going to contain a particular type of mineral? Will it just be trash still?<p>On what kinds of timescales does it metamorphose significantly, and into what kinds of material?
A a glance, it seems to make sense that burying straws/garbage in a landfill is better than throwing it in the ocean but chemically, plastic decomposes significantly faster when exposed to UV/sunlight. It also seems as though ocean organisms are more able to consume plastic & oil.<p>It sounds crazy, but could it be that trash in the ocean is actually a better option?
This article is focused on the US, and recommends:
- To fix the exporting of plastics to countries that don’t properly process it.
- While this hasn’t been fixed, change your personal behavior to not recycle plastics so it goes to a landfill instead.
Correct?<p>If you live elsewhere, you should do this analysis yourself. I live in the UK, which apparently exports plastics to Turkey, Netherlands, and a bunch of other countries. So I guess it’s fine to recycle here?
Some percentage of our trash stream gets incinerated to generate electricity (then metals etc. are recovered and the remains go into a landfill). I can never find solid stats on what percentage but the claims sound like it's the majority of the trash stream.<p>But we also live so close to the coast that straws and any other litter in the wrong places can easily wash into storm sewers then eventually the Gulf of Mexico.
> banning straws is just plain stupid<p>I believe the OP meant plastic straws. I live in Poland and haven't seen plastic straw in a while - all replaced by paper and other natural material straws. I don't feel it's stupid, but I might be missing something.<p>It's also a surprise to me that US uses recycle bins to just ship the contents overseas. How stupid that is? Why not actually recycle it?
Trying to find out how much recycling gets diverted to landfills anyway. I'm in a relatively interior region where shipping abroad seems prohibitive, and local recycling facilities clearly do not seem to have capacity to process recycling properly. Still going through the rigamarole of sorting and occasionally cleaning my recyclables even though it seems excessivly wasteful.
> And banning straws is just plain stupid.<p>Why? We don't have them anymore in germany. People move on and new solutions get invented.<p>Seeing a plastic straw is weird to me.
The Pasig River in Manila doesn't seem to look nearly as bad as the author claims:<p><a href="https://www.google.com/maps/@14.5674227,121.0375559,3a,90y,77.8h,72.18t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sloMcVo1GS9fu0WjnCQ5pPQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/maps/@14.5674227,121.0375559,3a,90y,7...</a>
"Globally: One and only one solution exists to curbing the deluge of oceanic plastics. The international community has to get the Philippines and similar countries enough money to have proper garbage collection."<p>What would this look like? I'm guessing it's more than just giving them a fleet of trucks and landfill equipment.
Interesting but what exactly is the point of this and who is it for? The continued focus on something as myopic as drinking straws and proposed "solutions" to the straw problem that depend on individual choices is actually insane given the point we are at in the battle against climate catastrophe.
Instead of spending a bunch of money to ship stuff to Asia, then spending a bunch of money to upgrade their waste management facilities, why don't we just have our waste management companies toss unusable plastic from recycling into their landfill next door?
My family keeps our own compostable straws in the car. We typically don't ask for straws, lids, bags, etc. There are cases where you may forget, or can't avoid it, but overall it has decreased our yearly plastic use.
> And anything that goes into the landfill does not get into the ocean.<p>That's just not true. All plastic eventually ends up in the ocean. The "it's all decomposed in 50 years" is a myth.<p>There was a pretty convincing article about all of that here on HN a while back.