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

191–200 of 252 posts

Re: An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

#191

Post by maeil »

munk-a wrote: post #83
brian-armstrong wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody's forcing you to drink from a straw if you don't want to. Chill.

In a lot of transactions straws are handed out regardless of the customer's desire - ditto for plastic cutlery with takeout/delivery. For individual businesses the math is against conservatism. Failing to deliver cutlery and getting massive complaints (especially if they lead to politically charged boycotts) is the second most expensive option - the most expensive option is forcing customers to state their preference…

I live in the 3rd biggest food delivery market in absolute terms, with the per capita size being bigger than the top 2. Here UberEats is not a thing and one local player has the majority market share.

> the most expensive option is forcing customers to state their preference (and baked in preferences like those submitted by UberEats are small check boxes that users don't see and so restaurants often ignore)

Every significant player in the food delivery market here has their app work the exact same way: there is a clear, big checkbox for "I don't need cutlery". It's impossible to miss if you've used the app more than once, I'm sure people missed it the very first week it was introduced but now it's standard, everyone knows about it. Check the box? Restaurants don't send cutlery. Simple as that. Want to hear something even crazier? I'm pretty sure the checkbox is checked by default, so if you don't uncheck it, you don't get cutlery (not 100% sure because it may just default to whatever you chose on your last order).

This is just not a problem whatsoever. I'm sure by now it has already saved millions of pieces of plastic.

Re: An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

#192

Post by wander_homer »

qiskit wrote: post #183
cgrealy wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/ge…

> The united states is a continental nation with infinite resources.

Without imports the US doesn't even have enough resources to sustain its own lifestyle. The only infinite resource they seem to have is ignorance.

Re: An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

#194

Post by Thorrez »

johnmarcus wrote: post #156
cortesoft wrote: post #92

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.

Use the money from the tax to help poor people.

A tax is much more free market than a ban.

Re: An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

#195

Post by lisper »

Retric wrote: post #173
lisper wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> slowly break them down all the way to CO2 Sure, let's turn all the plastic into atmospheric CO2. What could go wrong?

Assuming the plastics started from atmospheric CO2 in the first place, noting.

But plastics are not made from atmospheric CO2, they are made from fossil hydrocarbons, i.e. from oil.

Re: An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

#196

Post by lisper »

photochemsyn wrote: post #175
lisper wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> slowly break them down all the way to CO2 Sure, let's turn all the plastic into atmospheric CO2. What could go wrong?

Well, at that point, you could use the CO2 to make more plastic rather than releasing it to the atmosphere. My point was, this is how nature recycles biomass every year. Plastics are currently manufactered from natural gas feedstocks; you could make plastic from CO2 just like trees make lignin from C02. Then, if you buried that plastic (made from atmospheric CO2) in a landfill after use, that would plausibly be remov…

But plastics are not made from atmospheric CO2, they are made from fossil hydrocarbons.

That's the whole point: the one saving grace of plastics is that they maintain the sequestration of fossilized CO2. If you let them decompose all the way back to CO2 then you have eliminated that last remaining benefit.

Re: An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

#197

Post by et2o »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #133
solveit wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We were able to lift entire neighbourhoods in the 19th century but now we can't even build houses...

We can still build them now. It's a question of whether we're allowed.

I think that’s exactly what OP meant

Re: An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

#198

Post by vanviegen »

andjd wrote: post #82

The author is conflating two separate issues. Their main point is at the end: > Banning plastic straws is stupid. They're probably right that throwing out plastic straws is better than throwing them in the recycling, assuming that plastic straws can't be efficiently recycled. That being said, many US recycling utilities typically sort the recycling on shore, and plastics that are too small to be efficiently identifie…

Bamboo straws are actually really nice. But I guess that they're a bit more expensive that paper straws, as we're still seeing the latter in many places.

Re: An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

#199

Post by kretaceous »

Melatonic wrote: post #102

I do not understand why more restaurants do not have metal straws They already have silverware and a whole process for cleaning it and whatnot. Why not just also invest in metal straws and re-use ? It seems like it would be cheaper than even plastic straws long term. And of course less waste.

Why not straws made out of recycled paper/cardboard?

Re: An illustrated guide to plastic straws (2021)

#200

Post by MisterMower »

munk-a wrote: post #186
MisterMower wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you use a straw while driving? Most people do.

If silicon straws are better, why don’t more people use them? I would posit that they’re not actually better, otherwise we’d see more widespread adoption.

Post reply on HN