Environmental crazies on the move again.
Seattle continues to play its role as an incubator of bad policy ideas by imposing the nation’s first ban on plastic straws. First articulated in September of last year, the new ban officially went into effect on Sunday.
The law prohibits all food-service businesses, including restaurants, coffee shops, delis, and pubs, from offering any disposable straw or utensil to patrons unless they specifically request one. Should a customer ask for one, said straw will have to be not just biodegradable but compostable under Seattle’s exacting city-level standards. Violators will be hit with $250 fines.
[…]
That 500 million straw a day figure—cited by The Washington Post yesterday — has been debunked as the product of a nine-year-old’s research. But even if that stat were accurate, straw bans are unlikely to help the planet much. The U.S. is responsible for a tiny portion of the world’s marine plastic waste (less than 1 percent), as are plastic straws themselves (about .03 percent). The best approach to the problem of oceanic plastic pollution is better waste management systems in the developing world, not bans on plastic products.
It is easy to see a parallel between this movement and the once-popular urge to prohibit or restrict the use of plastic bags. Likewise spurred on by bad stats and feel-good activism, San Francisco became the first major city to ban plastic bags in 2007, with prohibitions later moving on to the usual suspects of Seattle, Los Angeles, Austin, and eventually the entire state of California. But once the easy wins were out of the way and consumers became increasingly irritated at the loss of convenience, a backlash set in.
h/t Rob
almost everything we buy is package in plastic…what are these loons thinking
The message here is that if you use straws, you suck…
Isn’t a good portion of a hypodermic needle made of plastic? Hellooo, San Francisco–where’s your plastic ban on these? Oh wait…You’re handing out 400,000 a month. Not hypocritical…nooo.
Exactly! I am willing to wager there is 100,000x the amount of plastic MEDICAL waste as drinking straw waste. What a JOKE.
And BTW … my wife uses a drinking straw DAILY to sip coffee from her commuter cup ensuring NO SPILLS on her outfit of the day. Just one embarrassing commuter spill ensured she would use a PLASTIC drinking straw for the duration of her working life.
As a kid, the straws were all paper. Paper straws work fine. As far as I can tell, they are competitively priced with plastic straws. Can anyone explain why this is a big deal?
I think you are right about the paper straws, but weren’t they wax coated?
yes, I remember them as a kid. that was what was available, they weren’t as long lasting as plastic straws when shooting spitballs but hey we grew out of that.
The effort to ban “X” is not environmental stewardship, never has been, never will be.
This is the next move to redistribute wealth.
We know because there is never talk of a suitable sustainable replacement, such as in this case replacing a plastic drinking straw with a paper one, the go to is to create a crisis and then impose a mandate followed by a requirement to fund a program to make the end user pay to a UN body that under current laws has no power to levy a tax.
Globalism… where the so called elites decide whats best for everyone and then impose their will, consultation with the peasants not required.
See: Plato’s Republic
I agree with Joseph.
People are trying.
http://www.greenmunch.ca/disposable-wooden-cutlery-canada/
Hey Davis,
Nice wooden cutlery. Seems costly. However, these are probably reusable. Not long ago I saw an item about the Georgia Chopstick Company which makes chopsticks out of poplar and sweet gum trees for the Asian market. The Asians use ~ 63 billion sets / year. Apparently they are marked “made in U.S.A.” The buyers must think this to be unusual, and it certainly is.
I just dropped a wee memo in the mail box to the ground beef brains @ A&W advising them (with a hard copy) their spankin’ new porricy on plastic straws is based on an urban myth. started by the 9 y.o.
the whole thing is similar to the chain letters, chain emails of yore, and still. it also explains why telemarketer scams work.
migawd, when will the stupidity cease?
Seems to me that when I was a kid straws were waxed paper, or am I imagining that?
Not trying to start an argument, just reminiscing. (Or having a senior’s moment…)
I wasn’t imagining wax straws.
https://vancouversun.com/news/world/paper-straw-revival-plastic-straws-are-an-endangered-species-2
I recall when plastic bags were introduced to stores/supermarkets to replace the old paper ones; they were going to “Save the rain forests”.
Oh dear.
speaking of paper drinking straws, I once rammed one right thru a potato and took it to school for show-and-tell to demonstrate how tornadoes can do the same thing with real straw into a fence post.
the trick was to plug the open end with my finger at the last split second.
Very cool!
Check out where over 90% of plastic pollution in the oceans comes from
https://www.blazingcatfur.ca/2018/07/02/study-reveals-90-of-global-plastic-waste-comes-from-just-ten-rivers-in-asia-and-africa/
In the UK, there was a big campaign agains tplastic bags because they were cloggin the waterways and killing Swans (upposedly). No one mentioned that the problem was in fact littering. Well, except me, that is. That went down well at the donner party, I should say 🙂
This is the same city that wont allow salting the Streets because they say it will contaminate Puget Sound never mind the fact that its already saltwater I mean its as idiotic as L.A. painting their streets white
White! I didn’t know that! How rrrrrrrraccccisst can you get !!!
Don’t larf. You can be sure Canada will be at the forefront of the world anti-straw campaign; it’s because it’s 2018 and Canada’s back! (In the abscence of any substantially relevent policies).
You know the tune
================
I am the very model of a modern top ecologist,
I’ve information vegetable, animal, and populist,
I know the kinds of Poisons, and I quote crimes allegorical,
From ExxonMobile to DuPont, in order categorical;
I’m very well acquainted too with matters most polemical,
I understand equations, both the simple and the chemical,
About Carbon Global Warming I’m teeming with a lot o’ noises—
With many cheerful facts about the derth of our future choices.
Calgary and Airdrie are right there with those drinking straw bans. Lets ban more hygenic products
This is just another annoying bit of virtue signaling by shallow-minded leftists and green fascists.
Some cocktails are designed for straws so now what? Back to paper-wax straws I guess until they ban those. Or they ban certain cocktails. Or something. Can we ban leftists?
Same thing as the blanket banning of incandescent light bulbs. Hard now to even get incadescent bulbs for night time lighting in a bedroom, where soothing light is needed. Instead we are forced to buy crappy narrow spectrum LED bulbs whether we are lighting a crawl space or a bedroom.
Leftists have to be some of the dumbest people on earth.
“Leftists have to be some of the dumbest people on earth.”
I emphatically disagree. They are ALL of the dumbest people on earth.
I remember when transistors were the size of a large housefly. Now they’re not. And yet I am willing to wager that we throw away 100x the volume of used transistors as plastic straws. Where’s the outrage? Oh yeah … we ship all that electronic waste to China. Out of sight, out of mind.
Ashes to ashes.
Silicon to sand.
And speaking of environMENTAL crazies. . .
Trans Mountain pipeline protesters rappel from Ironworkers Bridge in aerial blockade
I wish we could turn them over to the Russians for “processing.” There’s a nice jail in Murmansk waiting for them.
Wait until they go after all the plastic disposable dinner ware like plates cups glasses and cutlery. Events like Independence Day, Canada Day,and all the others that are celebrated in North America will be a mess and a lot of work cleaning up. Oh yes we will have paper plates that are only good for holding things that weigh less than the plate does. Then we will have wooden knives and forks until somebody swallows a sliver and sues them into oblivion. Hell they already have us recycling everything but used toilet paper its time to say no to this idiocy.
Maybe it’s just me, but if those Greenpeace idjiots have willingly placed themselves in danger while breaking the law, then they deserve to be plastered against a tanker’s superstructure. I wouldn’t even slow down.
So why aren’t the local police immediately arresting the whole crew, just as they did with two ‘thrill seekers’ who accessed the ladders of the Lions Gate bridge towers recently.
One law for all.
Back when I was young, in the beginning of time, when Christ was still a corporal, straws sometimes were real straws – i.e. dried grass stems – grass of rather large diameter.