We need to do both. Push for ships to reduce their environmental impact (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_shippi...) AND take individual action.

Saving the planet - an enormous and incredibly complex task, will undoubtedly require quite a bit of individual action and behaviour change. To do without a straw or bringing your own cup can be a commitment to such behaviour change, to accept and act on whatever reasonable measure we find out to be important. Finding out that, say, producing a bamboo straw or cleaning the reusable mug takes more energy than producing plastic straws and cups should not be taken as a reason to mock well-intentioned actions (not saying that you did), but rather to iterate and figure out real solutions.

Well intentioned actions might include trying to reduce one’s own straw use, thinking it will play a part in helping the planet.

They certainly don’t include using government force to impose that on everybody else, while having no fucking clue what one is talking about.

We already had this data before the straw bans. They're not based on evidence, they're based on one photo of a turtle with a straw in its nose. Straws are a pretty common type of litter on beaches, and I could understand bans were that kind of litter is a problem. But if you put a straw in a landfill it's not going to end up in a turtle's nose.

> But if you put a straw in a landfill it's not going to end up in a turtle's nose.

That depends on what happens with your trash. If it stays inland in a landfill, then no. If it's sold for sorting and transported long distance on a barge, then that's possible.

And it needs to be a well placed and designed landfill:

https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/111835637/volunteers-in-tears...

"The Fox Glacier landfill operated from the 1960s until the early 2000s. It was eroded by the Fox River during the huge storm event on March 26 and 27."

Or even the context. A coffee shop in my neighborhood started keeping straws behind the counter, so that you have to ask for them.

And yet, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that there's less plastic in a straw than in a disposable coffee cup, let alone the doubled cups that they serve the coffee in in lieu of using those paper sleeves. Certainly after they've stuck one of those plastic sippy lids on top of the whole affair. If they're worried about their waste stream, that's the place to start.

Many will have paper straws as substitutes, but I’m very skeptical they did a study regarding cradle-to-grave impact of the substitution. Maybe they are net positive (results wise), but I doubt they looked at numbers and said, yes, clearly paper straws are less impactful.

I imagine it's similar to the grocery bag situation. Reusable cotton canvas bags keep plastic out of the environment, but their production emits thousands of times more CO2 per bag than disposable plastic bags. If you buy groceries once a week, you basically have to use the cotton canvas bags the rest of your life to even have a chance at breaking even, everything's a trade-off.

Aren't there better materials to make the resuable bags out of than cotton ?

Also, you can reuse the plastic bags.

My favorites are made of nylon. It's a much lighter material than what most stores are selling as reusable bags. Enough so that you can easily keep 1 or 2 with you all the time if you're the kind of person to carry a purse or courier bag. Meaning that, unlike those canvas bags or the ones made out of that big heavy stiff plastic material, they're convenient enough to actually get used regularly.

I found one study that suggested, though, that the lowest environmental load came from the regular disposable bags as long as you reuse them until they wear out. The main reason I don't do that is that I've discovered that supermarket employees seem to really hate that, in a way they don't with the bags that are made for reuse.

I'm also inclined to guess that it's still bikeshedding. The shopping bag is really visible, but it's maybe a small amount of waste compared to all the unnecessary packaging for the products it's being used to carry home.

How does this hatred manifest?

Maybe because the normal unused plastic bags are in that sheet you can just peel one off and it is easily opened up thanks to the design of the plastic bag holder. While if I was recycling them they are probably a wadded bundle inside another plastic bag.

Starbucks claims that their new strawless lids use 9% less plastic than previous straw+lid.

https://stories.starbucks.com/stories/2019/say-hello-to-the-...

Starbucks also pays customers to take their drinks in reusable cups.

https://www.starbucks.com/responsibility/environment/cups-an...

I am not surprised to learn that people who have thought about the issue for more than 2 minutes have come up with a better solution than a low effort HN comment.

> It was always a feel-good hi-viz, low-impact measure given little evidence behind the measures.

I think the EU when banning this had data, they sampled garbage they found on various beaches and decided that straws are both common and easy to replace.

One interesting side-effect is the rise of the edible straw. There are other edibles as well, spoons, forks, knives and bowls - though the latter is rather an old idea.

So while the ban straws was a token gesture it does seem to have generated some creativity and movement on other fronts which at least gets peoples attention on the problem of single-use plastics.

Yeah, we have to start somewhere and we have to have the mindset that we should keep going.

I'm more worried that we dig in on the easy problems, forgetting the big, hard problems. Like plastic straws instead of fishing nets...

Why worry without evidence?

Even if the only the thing the straw ban did was inspired a whataboutism movement to pretend to care about fishing nets, it would still be a net win in terms of motivating improvement.

One problem with banning plastic straws as well is that many disabled people are dependent on them to be able to drink. AFAIK the alternatives (other kinds of straws) don't work well.

That's why they aren't all banned.

Problem? There is a solution though: https://www.sulapac.com/

In Thailand they plan to put a bit more effort in, over the next 2 years.

> End of this year, Thailand will be free from three types of plastic – microbeads, cap seals and oxo-degradable plastics – and from four other types of single-use plastics by 2022, according to a road map that got the Cabinet’s initial nod on Tuesday.

> The four single-use plastics to be rid of by 2022 are: lightweight plastic bags less than 36 microns thick; styrofoam food containers for takeaways; plastic cups and plastic straws – with the exception of those who still need to use them such as the elderly, patients and children.

I hope Thailand sticks with these plans. Plastics use is huge over here and in my opinion these plans could make a big difference.

Source: https://www.nationthailand.com/national/30367931

Siri, what is marginal utility?

Siri, what percentage of you is plastic?

> a feel-good hi-viz, low-impact measure

Isn't this all that politics is?

One problem with plastic straws is they get stuck inside creatures noses and gullets and cause them a great deal of pain. So the tonnage may be small but the damage potential is significant if you are a marine creature.

I get the sentiment behind objecting to straw bans and the like. But I think we're at a point where reducing plastic waste is becoming critical. It's everywhere. Short lived single use plastics like straws, cutlery, packing and shipping materials have to go the way of their dinosaur derived chemical components.

if you only had limited time and resources to actually change something wouldn't you want to focus on the things with most impact? Also, before banning anything do we actually have an understanding of what the environmental impact is going to be? (e.g. if producing a paper straw consumes more electricity and generates more pollution than a plastic straw ending up to actually be worse for the environment than just keeping to use the plastic ones, wouldn't you want to know this before you ban the plastic straws and force the use of paper straws?)

I did not advocate paper straws. I would much rather a change in the way we consume things. Do we need straws at all? Do we need or want a life that moves so fast that you can't stop and remove the lid to your beverage to consume it?

Plastic waste reduction needs to think bigger. This isn't about straws. It's about a wasteful throw away culture that has to adapt to a less wasteful way of life. And that will involve making sacrifices beyond paper straws.

Does an AMD threadripper need to come in a huge gaudy plastic display case? Does amazon need to send a thumb sized trinket in a 10x12 plastic bubble envelope? Why does my gadget come in a fancy box that needs to be placed in another box filled with foam packing peanuts or plastic bags full of air? All that wasteful packaging does is clog landfills and waterways. But people foolishly praise it as in the case of the horribly wasteful AMD packing. It's environmentally tone deaf.

i understand that you were not advocating for paper straws. that was just an example