Why does every drink need a straw, anyway?
Biggest reason for me is ice. It is very difficult to drink a soda with crushed ice keeping the ice out of your mouth without a straw.
90% of “eco-friendly” paper straws contain traces of toxic forever chemicals
121–130 of 190 posts
Re: 90% of “eco-friendly” paper straws contain traces of toxic forever chemicals
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
I question if it actually does make a difference, and in any case, we should kill two birds with one stone and just not drink unhealthy drinks. “It’s so simple!” -Jim Gaffigan “Stop it!” -Bob Newhart
Let’s just outlaw everything but tap water.
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Re: 90% of “eco-friendly” paper straws contain traces of toxic forever chemicals
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Consumers demand it, and we chose a society that mostly freely provides goods for consumer demands. Except for Ad industry and marketing.
The presumption that all advertising is merely crass mass manipulation in order to force consumers to do things they otherwise wouldn't want to do is, I fear, continued elitism. And in the context of this discussion, you might be asked to prove that straws are used purely because of the manipulations of marketers.
So why do advertisers do it?
Re: 90% of “eco-friendly” paper straws contain traces of toxic forever chemicals
#124Why are aluminum cans cheap and disposable but we can't have cheap aluminum straws?
Yeah, maybe aluminum straws wouldn't need to be lined with the same epoxy or polymer that aluminum cans are, since they wouldn't have to contain liquid long enough that oxidation is an issue?
Re: 90% of “eco-friendly” paper straws contain traces of toxic forever chemicals
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
When drinking particularly acid drinks, juice, soda, etc., a straw significantly reduces the amount of erosion of your teeth.
Do we as a society even need acid drinks?
We don't need a lot of things. A better example than plastic straws is beef: we definitely don't need beef, it's already expensive, and it has an extremely large and disproportionately heavy impact on CO2 consumption due to the combination of required grain, methane release, and needing land for cows incentivizing cutting down rainforest. Most people here would be pretty up in arms about any proposal to ban beef, so why focus on comparatively harmless stuff like lipstick and soda?
Re: 90% of “eco-friendly” paper straws contain traces of toxic forever chemicals
#126I'm sure someone probably feels strongly about this, but I will ask anyway: Do we as a society even need straws? I never use a straw at home. The only time I would consider wanting one would be for a milkshake maybe, due to its thickness making it hard to sip otherwise. I am not anti-straw, just think it is sort of a weird thing for our society to use when I stop to think about it.
Do we need disposable straws? Some people need straws (kids, disabled people), but in most cases it's better to bring your own reusable straw to fill that need rather than relying on whatever straws they have at the place you are going to. My toddler for example will just chew up most types of straws (especially those disgusting paper straws). Bringing a stainless steel, a glass straw, or one of those cups with integ…
Kids do not need straws.
Re: 90% of “eco-friendly” paper straws contain traces of toxic forever chemicals
#127From the paper( https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19440049.2023.2... ): > PFAS were detected in almost all paper-based straws, with highly variable concentrations between brands, ranging from Is this a lot? What do these levels mean? "Detectable" isn't really a useful threshold for many chemicals. Also, how much of these chemicals am I likely to ingest? Does it depend on the type of drink, it's temperature…
In March 2023 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released, for public comment, proposed MCLs of 4 ng/L. Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202...?
maximum contaminant level [MCL]. Straw weighs around .42 grams. I am not to concerned about the upper end of 7.15 ng/g contamination. By all means worry about PFAS if you wish, but straws really don't look like the problem.
Re: 90% of “eco-friendly” paper straws contain traces of toxic forever chemicals
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can’t help asking weather do we as a society need lipstick ?
We have a lot of things that we don’t need. Abundance and option (rather than bare sustenance) are defining features and goals of a healthy society. That’s a long way of saying that there are a lot of things we don’t need, but that eliminating them makes relatively little sense. We should instead develop compensating systems based on those needs (such as disincentivizing single-use straws, and normalizing reusable on…
> Abundance and option (rather than bare sustenance) are defining features and goals of a healthy society…
Do you have a source for this claim? It’s not something I’ve read or heard in 36 years.
Re: 90% of “eco-friendly” paper straws contain traces of toxic forever chemicals
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do we as a society even need acid drinks?
Do we as a society even need [alcohol|nicotine|cannabis|refined sugar|fat|salt]? Maybe not. But I refuse to believe that you asked that question in good faith, because we're obviously going to have all of them. People should be free to live as healthily or as unhealthily as they choose.
People should be free to live as unhealthily as they choose as long as the problems they inevitably create don’t negatively affect other people.
Activities high in negative externalities should be prohibitively expensive to help pay for remediation, and the opposite should be positively reinforced, even subsidized. A stitch, in time, saves nine.
Re: 90% of “eco-friendly” paper straws contain traces of toxic forever chemicals
#130From the paper( https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19440049.2023.2... ): > PFAS were detected in almost all paper-based straws, with highly variable concentrations between brands, ranging from Is this a lot? What do these levels mean? "Detectable" isn't really a useful threshold for many chemicals. Also, how much of these chemicals am I likely to ingest? Does it depend on the type of drink, it's temperature…
And it will end up as yet another "research" funded by petroleum companies.