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An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

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181–190 of 252 posts

Re: An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

#181

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…

It is possible to drink without a straw. Adapt.

Re: An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

#182

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…

I was with you until the freestyle machine part, they're awesome. Seriously, what's wrong with them? It doesn't prevent you from getting the regular things. I too, hate the paper straws. They are terrible. The "no straws" campaign is just a feel good thing and really does little.

I agree with both of the existing comments. The flavor isn't quite right (personally, I think there's something funky with the sweetener, but i dunno), especially cherry coke isn't really cherry coke. And the UX is awful; dispense latency is bad, touch screen calibration is usually bad and not really fixable because the display screen is so far back from the touch element that people of different heights are going to press different parts of the screen because that's where they see the screen. You could maybe make the active touch areas a little bigger, but the UI is pretty busy, so that won't be possible for soda selection, but it might help for flavor additives. The accessible buttons might be better than the touchscreen?, but I dunno they're not convenient if you're not in a wheelchair (which is fine, that's what they're for). I also haven't tried the scan a QR code and hope method, because it's slow enough already.

Sadly, I've only seen the Pepsi equivalent once or twice and didn't get to try it.

Re: An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

#183
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why? We don't have them anymore in germany. Even more reason to use plastic straws. If there is one country I don't want the US to follow, that's germany. > People move on and new solutions get invented. Like toxic paper straws? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31241276 > Seeing a plastic straw is weird to me. What's weird about them?

> If there is one country I don't want the US to follow, that's germany. Yeah, it'd suck if the US had higher life expectancy, more political stability, better civil rights, better healthcare, lower unemployment, lower inflation, lower crime..... What a nightmare scenario!

Yeah, an occupied nation with no sovereignty. Who has to beg for oil and gas from russia and when we tell them to jump, they ask "how high". Vast swathes of the US has higher life expectancy, healthcare, lower unemployement, lower inflation, lower crime than germany. And germany is the leader of censorship in europe. Certainly not a beacon of civil rights.

As for inflation...

https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/28/economy/german-inflation-indu...

The united states is a continental nation with infinite resources. Germany is a tiny european country the size of new mexico. Good luck to germany. They are going to need it.

Funny how we are so much worse than germany and yet most people around the world wants to move to the US?

"The U.S. continues to be the most desired destination country for potential migrants, as it has since Gallup started tracking these patterns a decade ago. One in five potential migrants (21%) -- or about 147 million adults worldwide -- name the U.S. as their desired future residence. Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Australia and Saudi Arabia appeal to at least 25 million adults each."

https://news.gallup.com/poll/211883/number-potential-migrant...

Re: An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could play this game with almost every product... I am sure there are many things that you use and like to use that I never use, but it isn't fair for me to just say, "Well it isn't important to me so that means it isn't important to anyone". Almost every product we produce, people could 'manage just fine' without... we can always just point to a time before the thing was invented and say, "Look, people managed ju…

Nice try big government, but a tax will only increase prices for end consumers and will disportionately affected poor people while actually doing jack shit to reduce consumption.

We have to deal with externalities somehow. If the price of damage to the environment isn’t priced in, the market will do nothing to solve it.

Re: An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

#185
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've used them before - how do the sippy cups tend to work for you? I've always been curious how they are for folks with sensitive teeth.

I’ve tried my kids snippy cups before, but the flow rate is way too low for an adult.

Just to clarify: the sippy cups offered at Starbucks and the like are usually the sort intended for adults.

Re: An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

#186
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obligatory reminder of the persons and homes hit by blobs of frozen detritus ejected from airplane toilets mid-flight. I think one-off examples of accidents are pretty unhelpful for discussions. Bamboo straws are also available alternatives and both those and disposable plastic straws can also cause fatal accidents - bubble tea straws in particular can easily break skin. There are also silicon straws available which…

That’s a trade off people should be able to make for themselves. You are arguing for a world in which the choice would not exist. Such incidents would increase dramatically if people started using metal straws more frequently: think auto accidents while people are drinking through a metal straw.

As I mentioned - silicon straws are also available which are far safer than the plastic ones.

I, personally, have a metal straw since it looks pretty - but I don't use it all that often while walking... even while using disposable straws I generally didn't drink while walking.

Re: An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Landfill space is not the issue at all. Landfills do not take up that much physical space, and we hav…

Also... > Eventually, in hundreds or thousands of years we will have to remediate that land. Over that time scale the land automatically remediates itself. There's a hill in Rome made of a big pile of Roman garbage. The hill is more useful than the pots were.

In the 60s there was a junk yard that some developer put a bunch of houses on top of near my house. Decades later nearly everyone that lived there developed cancer.

Re: An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also... > Eventually, in hundreds or thousands of years we will have to remediate that land. Over that time scale the land automatically remediates itself. There's a hill in Rome made of a big pile of Roman garbage. The hill is more useful than the pots were.

In the 60s there was a junk yard that some developer put a bunch of houses on top of near my house. Decades later nearly everyone that lived there developed cancer.

On that time scale, we can just build elsewhere instead. It's a complete non-issue once we know about the risks.

Re: An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

#190
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…

> 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

This is a very metropolitan thing and not the norm. Waste Management in San Francisco for example has spent a ton of money on fancy machines and people to hand sort.

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