Even though some people won’t admit it, because it will mean they are heartless evil creatures who don’t care about that turtle in the ocean, we all hate paper straws. It is basic science - paper and liquids don’t go well together. After a certain point, the paper gets soggy and soft and mushy and it becomes impossible to drink from it. Why, then, the last few years have seen an explosion of corporations and cities announcing bans on plastic straws in favor of paper the paper version (even though it seems to have slowed down a bit in the last couple of years because we have bigger problems)? To answer this question, look no further than our COVID policies…
Do something’ism…
In the last two years, we have seen time and again that the measures that will be preferred by our politicians (or businesses) to solve a problem are not the ones that will likely have the biggest impact, but the ones that will be the most visible. For example, even though it is now well established that plexiglass barriers and surface cleaning have no impact on COVID and in the former’s case may even be making things worse, we still have those clear plastics everywhere.
When the problem is pollution in the oceans, the biggest culprit is by far food packaging, and even a very small reduction in prepackaged food production would result in a significantly bigger impact than eliminating all plastic straw usage. Specifically, the US is estimated to have generated 36 million tons of plastic waste in 2018. It is estimated that around 30-35% of all plastic waste is food packaging, which means roughly 12 million tons of plastic food packaging every year. A 1% decrease would amount to 120,000 tons less plastic waste.
How about straws? The amount of plastic straws that end up in the waste is estimated to be around 2,000 tons per year. This is because while they are used in significant numbers, they weigh around 0.4 grams each, making the total impact in terms of weight negligible. Based on these numbers, a 1% decrease in food packaging would have the same effect IN ONE YEAR as completely eliminating all plastic straw usage for 60 years.
How About Masks?
A surgical mask is estimated to include 4.5 grams of plastic, which is roughly 10 plastic straws. This means that masks, which are loved by those who would support plastic straw bans, have a significantly bigger footprint on the environment. Specifically, this study estimates that in the US, somewhere between 200 M and 1 B mask waste is generated every week. If we take the middle, that is 600 million masks. By weight, that would amount to 2,700 tons of plastic waste from masks every week, more than all waste coming from straws in a year. This also means that over the course of two years, we generated enough waste from surgical masks to exceed all the plastic waste ever generated from plastic straws (given they came around the 1960s).
We are banning straws not because it will have a significant impact on pollution in the oceans, which is a very real problem, but because we like performative theater more than effective measures. We also don’t care about pollution when there is a bigger “current thing” to support…
So true. Don't wear or buy masks. Do use stainless steel straws. Do not use plastic clamshell food packaging. But also, don't buy the lie that it is the individual consumer who is the cause of pollution. Consumers buy what is available to them, whether it is gas or plastic. Changes need to come from industry and corporations. No tech developed by a billionaire or his corporation is ever going to address the real cause of pollution.