The plastic straw thing confuses me. I'd like someone to explain to me how anything besides the random runaway straw gets into the ocean. I live 60 miles from the ocean. We're people throwing them into storm drains that flow to the delta that flow to the ocean? We're people in San Francisco traveling to the beach and throwing them into the ocean? Couldn't we focus on not littering instead of legislating things like straws?

Plastic trash is mostly from a few sources in Asia. China and Indonesia iirc.

we literally ship our trash to china to "recycle" it (now china wont take our trash anymore). Turns out they were often just dumping it in the ocean. Now other countries do the same. It doesn't show in american metrics, because the other countries help us to be blissfully ignorant.

Maybe that should have been the public message we focused on, the actual dumping of trash into the ocean by foreign countries, and us sending it there when we supposedly recycle, instead of "little girl convinces law makers to go to paper straws!"

Someone who works at a bar told me recently that they “discovered” long tubular pasta (forgot the exact name) to be the best organic straws.

PS: You’re welcome.

Bucatini?

https://www.grubstreet.com/2020/12/2020-bucatini-shortage-in...

The bar I frequent uses straws made of biodegradable material derived from sugarcane - they last a lot longer than paper straws, but ultimately are water soluble and will dissolve after a day ish if submerged. They obviously cost a lot more than plastic, but the user experience is just as good without the forever waste.

From an ecological point of view it really depends how much carbon is emitted during manufacturing & transport.

Landfills aren’t actually that bad when it comes to getting rid of waste. If you expend more carbon using the “eco-friendly” straws than using the normal ones then it’s not worth it overall.

Why would you expect someone who isn't willing to sacrifice their comfort for a $10/mo incentive to sacrifice their comfort for a $0/mo incentive? Deciding "I don't like this person's ethics" doesn't mean "this person is suddenly inconsistent": you need to check your knee-jerk responses :/.

Well, for one thing people will often do for free things they wouldn’t do for money. Imagine choosing between “i will pay you $10 to come to my party” and “i’m having a party, will you come?”.

Parties are supposed to be fun, so if someone offers to pay you to come to a party, that sends a signal that the party is not, in fact, going to be fun at all--otherwise, why would they pay you?

On the other hand, paper straws are a shitty product that are unsuitable for use, but if I was offered a significant discount on beverages that were served with them...well, I wouldn't take it, but I could imagine someone who was desperately broke considering taking it.

See, what you said is exactly the problem i have with mainstream climate solutions. The choice shouldn’t be paper straws vs plastic straws. The choice should be no straws vs straws. Similarly, the question shouldn’t be “can I run a/c slightly off peak” rather it should be “how can I run less a/c”. This applies all over the place. Electric cars have lifetime emissions that are lower, but in the same ballpark as ICE cars - if everyone switches to electric and changes nothing else, we still have climate change.

No, the question should be “how do we produce significant amounts more carbon-neutral energy instead of reducing the standard of living”.

It was a sarcastic remark to his/her selfish attitude towards sustainability.

"Sorry, not sorry" multiplied by 1,000,000x and through the decades is what got us (all) in a climate emergency.

It certainly helped change my mind on the matter.