Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

hwfo.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 252 posts

Re: An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

#51

Post by adhesive_wombat »

MerelyMortal wrote: post #41
McNutty wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I just drink from the cup. I never use a straw when drinking at home, I don't magically require one when not at home.

Personally, part of the enjoyable expereince of drinking a milkshake is drinking it through a straw. Drinking a milkshake like a regular drink gives me no pleasure. I suppose if they ever went to paper straws where I live, i would just have to order a personal metal reusable straw.

> I suppose if they ever went to paper straws where I live, i would just have to order a personal metal reusable straw.

I suppose that's the sound of the system working.

Certainly I note use fewer plastic bags since they started charging for them, though I have also thrown away quite a few broken, much, much thicker, bags and bought a lot more small bin bags since then.

But neither the straw or bag are anywhere near a major contributor to plastic use, though I can see plastic bags certainly were a major litter source and are much less often found in hedges now.

Re: An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

#52

Post by bhk »

moralestapia wrote: post #44
mike_d wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your plastic straw has a big chance of finding its way to the sea IF you put it in a recycling bin. Here is a quick breakdown: - Black bin (trash): Goes to a landfill where it is regulated by the EPA and stored in containment and the off-gas is harvested for energy - Blue bin (recycling): Gets shipped by boat across an ocean to a third world country where it is dumped because that is the most profitable thing to do…

It's not that easy, Trash goes into what is called, waste transfer stations, see [1], where there's an effort to salvage recyclables from regular trash as well, what you do with the black/blue bins is basically helping them do their work (and this is good). Let's say then, that all this plastic goes into the "plastic that could be recycled" bin, of which we actually DO recycle 3.1 million tons of it (as stated in the…

People are intercepting plastic from our waste stream and re-directing it to other countries that dump it into the ocean? Well I see your problem right there!

The idea that we would not ban that and instead ban drinking straws because of that is even more absurd than the nonsense that I thought was in play.

Re: An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

#53

Post by bonestamp2 »

legitster wrote: post #34

Plastic gets a bad wrap. But it's a pretty dang efficient material. It takes so little energy and material to make something very functional and resilient. I know that CO2 analyses of the replacements to plastic bags and straws has not been very kind to them. I find it commendable to encourage people to consumer less stuff, but the war on plastic straws has been a huge step back - it's done relatively little to actua…

> the war on plastic straws has been a huge step back

I always find it funny when they give me a huge plastic cup with a plastic lid and then a paper straw. If straws are that big of a problem, get sippy cup style lids and skip all straws.

Re: An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

#54

Post by barbazoo »

archarios wrote: post #46
dylan604 wrote: post #19

"Globally: One and only one solution exists to curbing the deluge of oceanic plastics. The international community has to get the Philippines and similar countries enough money to have proper garbage collection." What would this look like? I'm guessing it's more than just giving them a fleet of trucks and landfill equipment.

Ideally, we would have funding for chemical recycling of plastics which would make a circular plastic economy. I don't know if this is actually a viable solution at scale but it's the dream.

I wonder if that would financially work out and not just make it so expensive to ship our recycling over there to no longer make sense, causing us to ship the stuff to the next cheap country throwing it into the ocean again.

Re: An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

#55

Post by munificent »

drewg123 wrote: post #23
munificent wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article is a great example of how poor use of math can do a disservice to the public. The article says: > Lost and abandoned fishing gear which is deadly to marine life makes up the majority of large plastic pollution in the oceans This is one of those statistics that shouldn't even pass the sniff test. Think about all of the millions of ways that humans use plastic across every single industry, job, and area of…

It seems like the study folks are quoting is a peer reviewed article in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w?fbclid=Iw... It states "Over three-quarters of the GPGP mass was carried by debris larger than 5 cm and at least 46% was comprised of fishing nets."

Ah, good catch! That does agree with the article, so maybe that's where the claim comes from and not directly from the Greenpeace article.

There's still a difference between "quantity dumped per year" and "total amount measured right now". It seems like ghost gear is not a large fraction of the plastic entering the ocean, but it a large fraction of the accumulated large pieces in the garbage patch. I presume that's because fishing gear is designed to survive in the ocean so takes longer to break down than other plastics.

Re: An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

#56

Post by jnmandal »

Yes, the US is a country that cannot process its own waste so it ships it overseas just to be rid of it. The solution is not to raise money and send it to the Philippines to build landfills. The solution is to actually recycle plastic, build circular supply chains, and use biodegradable materials as much as possible.

If humans are to stay on this planet, in the long term we cannot just keep piling up garbage in landfills and building on top of it. Eventually, in hundreds or thousands of years we will have to remediate that land. Its going to be a lot better if we just make our waste as recyclable as possible in the first place.

The author is recommending a half measure based on the assumption that the US cannot fix its own problems. They are also implying a false equivalency: banning single use plastics is not the same as recycling plastic. A more equivalent comparison might be the tradeoffs between plastic bottles for soda, water, or oils and glass or metal containers. It is also true that plastic straws are a much smaller problem then other usages of plastic such as bottles or event fishing gear and even bags.

Yet there is nothing inherently wrong with reducing plastic usage. Doing so is smart and will be important for the health and well being of future generations -- human and nonhuman -- of life on earth.

Re: An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

#57

Post by adhesive_wombat »

legitster wrote: post #34

Plastic gets a bad wrap. But it's a pretty dang efficient material. It takes so little energy and material to make something very functional and resilient. I know that CO2 analyses of the replacements to plastic bags and straws has not been very kind to them. I find it commendable to encourage people to consumer less stuff, but the war on plastic straws has been a huge step back - it's done relatively little to actua…

> bad wrap

Nice.

Focusing on plastic bags and straws is such a transparent "something just be done: this is a thing: it must be done" response.

90% of the time, the plastic bag in question is filled with products packed in plastic[1] and half the time, the straw is stuck into a clear plastic cup to show off the frappuccino.

[1]: Fruit and veg aside, why am I expected to buy a new spray bottle for every half litre of kitchen cleaner, say? Why can't I just buy one bottle and spray and then some kind of refill?

Re: An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

#58

Post by JoshGlazebrook »

I don't think the answer is paper straws and I personally dislike them. They turn slimy from your saliva and usually collapse on themselves before you're done with using it. I normally end up taking multiple just to replace them halfway through drinking.

More companies could go in the direction Starbucks has gone, switching their iced drink cups to "sippy cup" lids to eliminate the need for straws while maintaining a lid all together. But that begs the question, is the sippy cup top more plastic than just a straw and the old lid?

Or why not just use the compostable plastic straws that are readily available rather than trying so hard to make your company look "green" by saving the turtles from straws that never end up in the ocean in the first place.

Seriously, fuck paper straws. They're up there with coke freestyle machines. Absolute trash.

Re: An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

#59

Post by hammock »

JoshGlazebrook wrote: post #58

I don't think the answer is paper straws and I personally dislike them. They turn slimy from your saliva and usually collapse on themselves before you're done with using it. I normally end up taking multiple just to replace them halfway through drinking. More companies could go in the direction Starbucks has gone, switching their iced drink cups to "sippy cup" lids to eliminate the need for straws while maintaining a…

Did you read the article?

Re: An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

#60

Post by jccooper »

mike_d wrote: post #36
moralestapia wrote: post #27

Weird, first it says, "[...] zero plastic thrown in a garbage can in the United States enters the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre", in bold letters. But then later in the article, it admits that about 50% of US plastics (it is unclear whether is all of them or only the ones meant to be recycled) were shipped "to Indonesia and Vietnam, which proceeded to improperly dump over 80% of it." So, it does go into the ocean in…

> your plastic straw has a big chance of finding its way to the sea IF you put it in a recycling bin. Here is a quick breakdown: - Black bin (trash): Goes to a landfill where it is regulated by the EPA and stored in containment and the off-gas is harvested for energy - Blue bin (recycling): Gets shipped by boat across an ocean to a third world country where it is dumped because that is the most profitable thing to do…

A lot of "recycling" gets diverted to landfill domestically, too. How much depends, but lots of stuff is sorted out as unrecyclable, unidentifiable, or just plain unprofitable. Probably including most straws and other small items placed in recycling.
Post reply on HN