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A comment on The war on food waste is a waste of time. Parent comment

Re:The war on food waste is a waste of time by gamblor956 on Thursday February 27, 2020 @02:54PM (#22437110)
People like to pick on straw bans but the reason they're a thing is because plastic straws represent a substantial portion of the trash found on beaches and in waterways. And like plastic trash bags, plastic straws don't degrade, they just get ground up into smaller and smaller pieces.

They can also choke fish and birds if they get caught in the throats, or poke holes in the stomachs/guts of fish and birds.

Plastic straw bans may not make much sense in the Midwest, but they do matter in coastal areas.

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Re:The war on food waste is a waste of time by coral-snake on Thursday February 27, 2020 @09:05PM (#22439936)
Looking at the composition of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, plastic straws don't qualify as a line-item in this[1] 2014 study (either by mass or count).

70.4% of the mass found in the gyre is from fishing-related items (with a whopping 58.3% of mass from fishing buoys alone).

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4262196/

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Re:The war on food waste is a waste of time by gamblor956 on Thursday February 27, 2020 @09:42PM (#22440077)
I didn't say ocean. I said beaches.

Straws and plastic bags are targeted because they are the low hanging fruit that is easy to change. Because people are highly resistant to change, even when it's just a mild inconvenience, and addressing a small part of the problem is better than doing nothing at all.

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Re:The war on food waste is a waste of time by prepend on Thursday February 27, 2020 @06:30PM (#22439081)
> substantial portion of the trash found on beaches and in waterways

I don’t think do. What makes you think that. Unless you consider 1% substantial.

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