As many WUWT readers know, there’s this push to “save the planet” by banning plastic straws. Like most liberal Earth saving fantasies, it’s rooted in shonky science, or in this case, no science at all, just a guess.
The plastic straw ban movement was started by a 9 year old kid named Milo Cress who made estimates from interviewing manufacturer representatives. Per the NYT: article:
“I came up with this statistic because I couldn’t find anything else about it. If there are other statistics on how many straws we use that are based on more rigorous research than the research that I did, I’m happy to embrace those.”
Fact check: The claim that 500 million straws are used by Americans is an estimate above the ranges of more rigorous studies. Market research firms put the figure between 170 million and 390 million per day, or 63 billion to 142 billion straws per year.
Adding fuel to the fire, in 2015, a video showing a sea turtle with a plastic straw up it’s nose became the focal point for the movement started by a made-up number.
Win one for feelings, but a loss for science. If the issue is plastic waste in the oceans, then this graph really tells the story of where plastic straw bans might be most effective.
But the real question is, how many plastic straws actually end up in the oceans?
Good luck with China.
This reminds me of when California, during one of the previous droughts, mandated that restaurants could not supply a glass of water to a customer unless they asked for it.
97% of water usage in CA is agricultural (actually around 90%, but why let a little exaggeration get in the way of some good propaganda). So, it was nothing more than feel-good, virtual signalling.
It was a cash grab to help restaurants sell bottled water.
Using straws to drink is a kid’s thing in my country (NL). No sane adult wants to be seen drinking with a straw, the humiliation! Apart maybe from the odd cocktail but that’s it.
Why is it that grown ups haven’t mastered drinking from a glass yet? Are the glasses different over there, what is it?
huls
Think I might move to NL from the UK. Too many adult children here.
Except of course I’ll be moving back into the EU.
On second thoughts………..
🙂
Drinks sold in places like movies theatres and amusement parks come in waxed paper cups with plastic lids and a straw.
Ditto the drinks sold in fast food and just about every take out joint.
And yes…adults drink out of them too.
California now sends people to jail for straws
BUT advocates murdering the unborn!
60 million babies have now been killed since 1973 Roe vs Wade.
Another 60 million are consequently missing.
120 million people lost. Who would now be caring for our elderly.
Instead they enforce jail for a bit of plastic.
David L. Hagen
I’m not sure the point of having babies in a civilised society is to care for the elderly.
Personally, I don’t consider abortion laws a right/wrong issue. Nor does ranting contribute to the debate.
And I suspect it’s 120 million or so foetuses (from the end of the second month of conception I believe) not babies, as they are when they are delivered. Although I accept that medical science can now take a foetus from an early stage through to full term.
Whilst there are some mothers who don’t care, a termination for most is an agonising decision and one never forgotten. What abortion also covers is the innumerable women who have induced terminations, in other words they are already carrying a dead/terminally ill baby, or their life is threatened by the birth.
Your comment consigns the majority of caring parents to unfeeling criminals. That’s neither fair nor true.
foetus is just latin for baby.
Whether they agonize about it or not does not change the fact that they just killed their baby.
MarkW
And the already dead, or dying babies? Or the mothers that risk their own lives delivering a terminally ill baby? Who speaks for them whilst you condemn them as murderers?
I have witnessed two terminations up close and personal, neither because the mother didn’t want the child.
One was my girlfriend who, unknown to her, had fallen pregnant to the long term boyfriend she split up with shortly before she met me. She was forced to terminate the pregnancy early because of the child’s condition. It was dead within her. That was on doctors advice because the pregnancy obviously wouldn’t have been successful and she would have been at risk.
The other was my wife and my first conception which was stillborn at a very early stage. Neither of my partners had a choice in the matter, but both are counted in the “abortion” statistics.
It is also a medical fact that those who choose to plan a family by using ‘the pill’ as a birth control method run a high risk of losing their first child after coming off the pill.
The pain, however, remains to this day. Of two lost souls we daren’t name at the time, and I often feel we should have.
I hope you have never suffered an acute tragedy like that. But the pious opinions of those who haven’t’, condemning the ones who have somehow as criminals, distresses me as to humanities capacity for compassion amongst the civilised west.
There are moral and ethical questions surrounding elective terminations, but there are also moral and ethical questions around conception. A rape victim perhaps? Still counted in the abortion statistics. A condom failure? The victim of paedophilia behaviour? These people should all be forced to go full term?
I’m sorry mate but science has come too far to tolerate the simple “Abortion” label prescribed by medieval witches and superstitious priest’s.
What ‘pro-lifers’ do, is similar to climate change alarmist’s, they consign all that oppose them to one group, deniers. And you and I both know that is crap.
If the baby is already dead within her, then by definition she didn’t kill it.
As to the examples you give, those are less than 1% of all abortions.
From the Guttmacher Institute (https://www.guttmacher.org/gpr/2007/05/repeat-abortion-repeat-unintended-pregnancy-repeated-and-misguided-government-policies) U.S. study 2007:
“Fifty-four percent of women having abortions used some method of contraception during the month they became pregnant. ”
The majority of women obtaining abortions were not intentionally pregnant.
HotScot, you labelled the number of abortions due to health reasons as “innumerable”.
I notice that the CDC keeps health and abortion statistics, but does not report numbers of abortions done for medical reasons. Odd. Also, chemical abortions are called “Medical abortions”. Deliberate conflation?
Are they trying to keep the number of health related abortions unknowable? It must be a very small percentage of the whole.
SR
Tiny percentage…almost none.
I have heard several doctors state that they have never in their career seen or heard of a single abortion done for the health of the mother.
Anyone defending abortion is defending a truly despicable practice.
Steve
There is a significant percentage of terminations when women conceive shortly after coming off the pill, I have no idea if that is an influence when a woman falls pregnant whilst on the pill, but possibly.
And I suspect we could go digging round for statistics to support both sides of the argument.
Don’t get me wrong though, I hate the thought of an unnecessary termination. If people are old enough to have sex they should be responsible enough to live with the consequences.
Hotscot
I did not perceive you as supporting abortion-as-birth-control when you defended mothers who where victims of failed pregnancies. I sympathize with your, and the mothers’ losses.
Those of us who speak against abortion on demand are not opposed to abortions for health reasons. I feel the removal of a harmful part is appropriate if it threatens life, whether that part is a cancerous gall bladder or a dieing baby.
If you do go digging for statistics on abortions done to save the mother, you will find a very small number. These type of abortions were always legal. None of us anti-abortionist have ever said the mother in those circumstances is a murderer. It is a type of self defense, a right all have.
I feel that removing a healthy baby is equivalent to removing a healthy heart. Someone is killed. The convenience of the mother is well known to be the overwhelming reason for abortions. (This reason was specifically stated in Roe V. Wade.) These are the abortions I oppose.
SR
Steve
We’re largely singing from the same hymn sheet.
My objection was firstly to David Hagens swinging statement “BUT advocates murdering the unborn!” as being unhelpful. It condemns the innocent and presents a ‘concencus’ instead of inviting debate.
I used but two examples; mothers who are carrying dead foetuses and mothers who’s lives are at risk from child birth. There are numerous other instances where termination is morally justifiable, I have mentioned some but there are numerous others including mothers who are advised they can’t go full term, conception resulting from incest, etc. etc.
As for the concept that the numbers of mothers at risk from delivering a child are low, my wife was a State Registered Staff Nurse, an A&E Sister and is now a Masters qualified Senior Lecturer and head of department of 50 or so Nurse and Paramedic Lecturers (some PhD’s) and practitioners at a prominent University. Whilst she concedes the numbers are low, she also believes that numbers in each subdivision of the term ‘abortion’ are individually low as well. Contraceptive abortion may be highest, and politically prominent, but it’s by no means as clear cut as most of us assume.
And I’m afraid, after all is said and done, I struggle with the concept that as an individual, or a collective, I have the right to impose my will on another individual. I don’t have to carry a foetus for 9 months, why should I condone the mentality of mob morality over that of the individual with the sole responsibility of a grave decision?
And we can get all political and say that the democratic majority make the laws and we must adhere to them, but we’re then criminalising an individual for taking responsibility for her own life and that of her unborn child. Do I have that right? Does a woman deserve to be thrown in jail for a decision she alone is burdened with?
And we also seize control of individual liberty and the right to make our own decisions because someone else makes a judgement on morality? Is that right? Do we really need to punish someone who we know will suffer punishment for the rest of their lives for a decision to terminate a life. Is that the moral way?
I don’t honestly know, I just keep coming up with questions in my own mind. I don’t like the idea of elective terminations but then as a male I’ll never have to make the final decision. And whilst women can contribute perhaps more than men can, I’m not convinced they can walk in another’s shoes, no matter how they frame it.
What I do despise is the mob mentality. I keep raising the subject of minority groups framing our society through their political will. The pressure groups like the greens, who have managed to impose their insane concept of AGW on the rest of society as an example. In this case, we have anti abortion pressure groups that represent a minority, determined to ensure their opinion prevails over that of an individual and, more importantly, the individual no one else has a responsibility for but a mother.
I occasionally see desperately ill people and think, I wouldn’t let a dog suffer like you (I was an Ambulance driver and have considerable experience here). I’m not sure where that places me on the morality scale but I know of rational, intelligent, fully functioning adults with terminal conditions, who want to end their own life with dignity and in the UK at least, we deprive them of that right. Mob morality once again seizing control over an individual, but in this case it’s one who has the ability to make their own decisions. Is that also right?
So just where do we go from here? Allow more and more political and moral interest groups to make more and more decisions for us? How you bring up your kids? How you teach them the gospel of AGW? How schools allow the Catholic Church ensures their questionable version of morals should be taught? And how the decisions of life and death are only decided by the government when they decide to wage war.
Too many questions. Too few answers for me mate.
Hotscot
I am of like mind concerning individuals with terminal conditions who are not allowed to take their own lives. But, that situation is not comparable with the abortion question.
You asked the questions: “…criminalising an individual for taking responsibility for her own life and that of her unborn child. Do I have that right? Does a woman deserve to be thrown in jail for a decision she alone is burdened with?”
In the 3rd sentence you say the mother is the only person burdened by the babies death, yet acknowledge in the 1st sentence that there is also the baby that suffers. And you overlook the suffering of the father.
You said “I struggle with the concept that as an individual, or a collective, I have the right to impose my will on another individual.” You are getting to the heart of the issue with that question.
What is really the question at hand here is not whether a woman has the right to decide matters of her own body, but whether a mother has the right to impose her will on another individual – the unborn baby.
As for the morality of society judging the mother who kills her unborn child – If a mother who kills her infant is rightfully condemned, how is killing her unborn child different?
If a person who kills a pregnant woman can be charged with 2 murders, and if a person who causes a pregnant woman to lose her fetus can be charged with murder, society has already determined that an unborn baby is as human as a baby after birth.
To grant a mother the right to kill her unborn child is to give that mother the right to decide whether her unborn baby is human or not.
If anyone is to be allowed to decide whether someone is human, shouldn’t it be the very person?
SR
Steve
Like I said, I only have questions, I don’t have solutions.
“As for the morality of society judging the mother who kills her unborn child – If a mother who kills her infant is rightfully condemned,
how is killing her unborn child different?”
At the risk of us both going round in circles on a subject we largely agree on, I’ll just make an observation on that comment.
If a woman is raped and bears an early stage, healthy foetus which represents no threat to her or itself, by your example that woman should be forced to carry the child to full term.
It wasn’t the child’s fault the woman was raped but there is, I believe, provision for these circumstances in that it’s acceptable to terminate the pregnancy. And I think all but the most extreme anti abortionists would consider that reasonable and fair to the mother. But that means society no longer considers the rights of an innocent child paramount. The legality and morality of the means of conception are now the determining factor, not the child’s right to life.
Doesn’t that then raise the question of a ruptured condom? An accidental pregnancy, perhaps unwanted. Judging by the metric of the means of conception having a bearing on the life of the child, shouldn’t this case also be eligible for consideration too?
Then there’s incest and a perfectly healthy child conceived between two consenting family members. In the eyes of society the child again becomes secondary in the process, the means of conception becomes the determining factor.
And if the child conceived from an incestuous relationship suffered a genetic mutation (is that the right term?) because of the family connection, it’s almost a societal moral imperative to terminate the pregnancy. Yet many in the anti abortion movement would seek to deny a mother the choice of terminating the life of an unborn child with Downs Syndrome because it was, of course, naturally and legally conceived. So back to the conception method rather than the child’s welfare.
And as you know, I’m not arguing one case or the other, just posing questions. But I do think that, as usual, society uses a sledge hammer to crack a nut. By stepping into cases with exceptional circumstances and imposing a single judgement across society, it once again imposes the will of the minority on the will of the majority. The majority being the vast numbers of responsible mothers who are perfectly capable of making a rational and moral decision regarding the life of the child they are responsible for. Which goes on every single day.
OOOPS! This was supposed to go below HotScot’s next response.
HotScot, I did some digging:
http://www.abort73.com/abortion_facts/us_abortion_statistics/
“The state of Florida records a reason for every abortion that occurs within its borders each year. In 2015, there were 71,740 abortions in Florida. This table lists each reason and the percentage of abortions that occurred because of it.
Percentage Reason
.001% The pregnancy resulted from an incestuous relationship
.065% The woman’s life was endangered by the pregnancy
.085% The woman was raped
.288% The woman’s physical health was threatened by the pregnancy
.294% The woman’s psychological health was threatened by the pregnancy
.666% There was a serious fetal abnormality
6.268% The woman aborted for social or economic reasons
92.330% No reason (elective)”
Note that abortions due to physical health reasons, rape and incest added together totaled 1.105% (Only .065% of aborted pregnancies were life threatening for the mother!)
“In 2014, women who had not aborted in the past accounted for 55.1% of all abortions; women with one or two prior abortions accounted for 36.3%, and women with three or more prior abortions accounted for 8.6% (CDC)”
44.9% of U.S. abortions in that year were repeats!
SR
Elective abortion is the premeditated murder of a defenseless unborn baby. It is unspeakably evil. It is the defining moral issue of our age.
That said, I do not agree with David Hagen that our population is 120 million lower than it would have been, absent the abortion holocaust.
You see, surprisingly, at least in the United States, legalizing abortion had little long term effect on the birth rate. Instead, elective abortion has mostly replaced other forms of birth control, used to “plan” (delay) having children.
Unsurprisingly, there was a sharp increase in abortions, and a sharp drop in the birth rate, immediately following the January, 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. But then a strange thing happened: the abortion rate continued to increase, as acceptance increased. But the birth rate increased as well.
In fact, for five consecutive years the birth rate and abortion rate BOTH increased, simultaneously.
Abortion gradually became accepted, by many Americans, as a sort of backup birth control method, replacing caution and self-control. So, in the long term, the birth rate was only slightly reduced. The pregnancy rate rose nearly as much as the abortion rate. So, within a decade, the birth rate had nearly recovered to the slightly declining trend-line that it was already on. Most abortions simply replaced other forms of birth control, used for “family planning” purposes, to delay childbearing.
Dave Burton
Elective abortions weren’t really my point. I don’t like the idea of it any more than you do when a healthy woman ‘disposes’ of an unwanted child. She and her partner should have thought about that beforehand.
My point to John was that there is no point in ranting about it, condemning everyone when there are mitigating circumstances to be considered; rape victims, children with such debilitating conditions they will never have a quality of life, forced prostitution, even modern slavery. Then there’s the case of entirely responsible married couples who suffer a failure of contraception, a ruptured condom for example. The morning after pill is an option for them, when the child is barely a formation of cells.
These form a small proportion of terminations but to condemn these women (and sometimes their partners) as murderers is not right.
Part of the problem though, is religion rearing it’s ugly head within the debate. And considering the track record of the Catholic Church I think they have a cheek even showing up.
I also find it astonishing that on a science blog, people condemn abortion wholesale yet they are quite happy examining every minute detail of the climate, and many other subjects that crop up here from time to time, rationally.
The climate concencus is condemned by all climate sceptics but the abortion concencus is accepted without question by some, if not many climate sceptics.
The straws I get from McD or any other drive-thru are wrapped in paper probably because they are to be contaminant free, free from any finger juice of the server who just scratched their butt, or picked their nose. If you are given a cup in a restaurant with no straw, whose to say you’re not putting your lips where the server held your cup? Whose to say they passed their food-safe courses? 😉 Well, this is what my wife tells me as she is OhhhhCD.
Jeff Labute
I don’t think your wife is OCD at all. You surely wouldn’t eat bar snacks, peanuts etc., from a communal bowl?
Supermarket bakeries with fresh, unpackaged self serve products in displays, rarely with even tongs to handle them, not to mention people coughing and spluttering over them are abhorrent to me.
I’m all for kids playing in dirt, mine did, but I’d rather not risk an ebola epidemic because a foreign national escaped detection and contaminated a McDonald’s he/she got a job in.
Which sounds a bit hysterical, but I’d rather not catch something from someone who didn’t wash their hands after wiping their arse.
Even drinking through a straw at the restaurant does not protect you from the possibility/probability that the cup was touched on its interior before filling. Germiphobes must have a hard life.
I have met some people who are emphatic that cups and glasses must be placed in the cupboard upside down. Their concern is that dust/microbes might settle into the interior of the cup/glass between washing and the next use. I dare not ask why then is it OK to place the rim in contact with the cupboard shelf which may only get cleaned once per year? I don’t enjoy seeing heads explode.
SR
Rim down is idiotic.
This will decimate future Burning Man projects coming out of San Francisco that focused on the use of plastic straws to create their amazing straw art buildings, straw statues, straw art cars, and straw men for burning..
Amazing that a 9yr old kid’s shoddy research just emphasizes how the democratic party has been taken over by popsicle driven knee jerks…Gore, Ocasio-Cortez, and now a 9 year old…
BTW, no popsicle sticks allowed, nor outside packaging.
It’s just one idiotic thing after another – they’ll ban one product, and then after the warm-fuzzy buzz has worn off they’ll come back for another.
Even the low number of 170 million sounds way too high to me. That’s one every other day for every man, woman and child in the country.
Count me as ignorant. Because I never buy anything at Starbucks or espresso drive-throughs I have to ask, is hot coffee ever sipped through a straw? Surely more coffees are purchased each day than sodas. Everyone talks about McD’s, but their coffee is served with a drinking lid minus a straw. Coffees ordered to-go have always had condiments premixed, but now even drinks served inside come premixed. I think stirring straw consumption must be already greatly reduced.
I’m with you, MarkW. If producers are turning out straws in those numbers, many must be going to the dump unused.
SR
But just look at how good they feel.
Are these banned too?
https://www.lifestraw.com/
Jones
Don’t you just wish.
A product designed for the third world, sold to gullible western consumers, to filter the best treated drinking water on earth, of containments that don’t exist.
There must be all of 20 people in America who actually go cycling to a river bank with one of these, who didn’t think to bring some tap water, and thought it was a really good idea to drink water from a stream contaminated with bear shit.
And with one exception they all look to be made of plastic.
I wonder if these straws will gain momentum? I had one when I was a child.
http://www.krazystraws.com/
Like all liberal politics, facts don’t matter, just emotions. It is all a feel good movement on the path to hell.
I am now hoarding a collection of assorted size and colored straws. When straws are outlawed only outlaws will have straws. Mine will only be surrendered when my tool box is raided and the banned straws discovered.
Many uses:
Cover small bolts to protect them from epoxy applications to fill in worn holes, wheel/roller axles; spacer/filler for stripped screw holes, etc. What else could be used as temporary alignment/support and easily cut with a knife or scissors?
Use as depth gauges when drilling holes.
How will I ever place the fine lead shot into my break-open air rifle for use on close range varmints of varying sizes and desired terminal effects without a straw?
Blowing dirt/sand away from you pet’s/kid’s eye without wiping it in when there’s no other option available.
Don’t forget blowing out the computer keyboards collection of hairs and dust and other debris.
Oh did if forget temporary insulation for low voltage electrical connections/connectors and my test probes.
And also holding related small gage wires together in electrical circuits as well as identification prior to termination.
And then there’s transfer of small volumes of liquid from a larger container to a small one or application point.
There’s the easy transfer of a good drip of paint to test for matching color.
How will I get a couple of drops of 3-n-1 oil on the bearing/bushing on my tools/electric motor when the ‘spout’ is too short or lubrication point is hard to access?
What else could be used for nail ID/marker in construction layout for baselines and offsets with the durability of a plastic straw and various colors?
What will I use as a row marker when planting seeds in the garden prior the their sprouting up from the ground?
Then there’s use for blowing ant poison into narrow cracks in caulking around windows and such.
How will you drink from a crevice in a mountain spring seep?
Some without straws may resort to using contaminated rolled up currency to snort their drugs. This could lead to widespread clean straw distribution centers and physician prescriptions further stressing medicaid and/or other programs.
How will the kids plaster spitballs on the ceiling?
I almost forgot, drinking a soda in crushed ice and stirring my coffee.
I’m sure missed many other everyday uses for a plain old straw.
Save the straws! The air you breathe will be next!
eyesonu
You have just described a business case for a whole new range of straws.
Teach kids to drink like adults, leave the straws for practical uses.
We need to talk, the straw industry will be beating our doors down.
For many years, when I taught 3rd and 4th grades, we used plastic straws to illustrate geometric solids. Tomorrow’s youth will just not know what a tetrahedron is….
Back in the mid-1990s environmentalist also concerned with sea turtles, for whatever reason couldn’t stand the Florida theme parks, weddings and birthdays doing mass releases of balloons. They were determined to stop it so they lobbied the Florida Legislature hard who passed a bill sending regulations of balloon releases to what was then the Florida Marine Fisheries Commission (MFC) with a deadline to pass a rule. The MFC was in the middle of what was termed “the mullet wars,” one the most controversial fishery management issue in Florida’s history. The mullet wars involved predominately black churches, commercial and recreational fishery groups, and civic groups. The civic and church groups had held mullet fries for decades. On the date of the final balloon public hearing which had also been a daylong debate and very contentious public testimony on mullet, the balloon industry showed up to fight the balloon rule. They just didn’t understand the rule was going to be passed regardless. They showed up with a clown, the grandson of the modern latex balloon, and a well paid lobbyist. What they hadn’t done was bother to support their arguments for balloons with any data about balloon releases, balloon ingestion by sea turtles, or whether balloons actually killed sea turtles. The MFC was in no mood to even discuss the issue. The environmentalists had supported their position by showing a couple of turtles with balloons hanging out their mouths. At the time, possibly still today, more sea turtles are killed by coastal villagers off Central and South America than ever have been documented dying from balloon ingestion. The “precautionary principle” had struck again.
Hey! The old waxed paper straws were great. They worked well for a coke, then you could bite off the end, chew it up into a spit ball, and use the rest of the straw for a shot.
I am looking forward to it again.
plastic straws are just a distraction from the real problem that faces the USA
looks like 10 trillions (or 10 US Tera$)
…. ” it’s far worse than we thought ”
Today the Federal Debt is about $21,298,529,758,160.39
Federal Debt per person is about $65,273
from https://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/
eGads! Firstly, pushing a plastic straw up a sea turtles nose for propaganda purposes is illegal and immoral. Secondly, the surveys of plastics in the oceans show no plastic straws in collected pelagic marine debris in any of the studies I’ve seen (except on beaches, where the straws are brought to the beach by tourists and abandoned.)
And, very little pelagic (meaning out there in the oceans) debris is from the US or European developed nations.
There is a separate issue about near-shore plastic trash and debris — junk dumped off pleasure vessels, left by tourists, blown into the water from shore, washed down rivers and storm drains. These issues do exist in the US — they will exist for paper straws as well, even though they float less. This near-shore issue is simply a LITTER issue and should be handled locally through awareness and littering fines.
Kip
97% concencus just can’t be wrong.
And I reckon the Turtle figured out a straw was a good snorkel.
Let the green blob prove me wrong.
And if you think I’m crazy. I was listening to an item today describing how a pod of Killer Whales eat only the livers of Great White sharks. Evidently, two seize the pectoral fins and control it whilst another targets just the liver, rips it out, to be shared amongst the pod, leaving the shark to die.
These are 6M long sharks!
the arguments about straws are for suckers.
toorightmate
What about the blowhards?
Your’re just bigoted!
Kinda random, but you reminded me of…
https://tech-insider.org/software/research/acrobat/8101.pdf
Unless we really want an earth covered with decay-resistant litter, all single-use plastics, including straws, should be replaced as much as possible with compostable material or glass. China is the worst plastic polluter as per this article because developed countries, including the US, have been shipping their plastic waste to China, where it finds its way into the rivers and oceans. So this is our problem too, especially as China is now refusing to accept any more of our waste. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna885946 more.
Plastic breaks down in just a couple of years when exposed to sunlight.
See reply to Menicholas below.
After only a few decades, there have already been found to be bacteria evolved to eat plastic.
One kind was found in a Japan bottling facility.
And as mentioned, UV light breaks down plastic very quickly.
There will be no Earth covered in plastic debris apocalypse.
Get a grip.
Bacteria that eat oil and tar have been around almost as long as there has been oil and tar.
It’s not that big a jump to go from eating oil to eating plastic.
Could be useful but there are no facilities developed to apply this technology as yet. May take a while. Meanwhile, trash and toxins.
Unfortunately the plastic that breaks down in sunlight is mostly floating in oceans, where it degrades into micro-plastic particles that get into the food chain, releasing toxins that are absorbed by larger creatures, including humans. The effect of long -term exposure to these toxins, such as dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and bisphenol A (BPA), is not yet well known but “has been linked to and are associated with many health problems, including developmental impairment (neurological impairment, growth abnormalities and hormonal imbalances), cancer, endocrine disruption, neurobehavioral changes, arthritis, breast cancer, diabetes and DNA hypomethylation.”
(Webb et al 2013, Polymers, 5, 1-18; doi:10.3390/polym5010001)
Google bacteria that eat plastic…you will see.
If the new laws against plastic straws here in the US actually work, they will clean up, at most, 3 straws out of every 1000 discarded in global waters. But we will still get the blame for the plastic pollution that remains because no one will notice the difference, and everything bad is always the fault of America.
There is much more plastic in cups, bottles, toys, etc. than in straws. Why are they picking on straws when the drinking containers they are used with contain so much more plastic?
I think we should ban plastic surgery. I’m sure we could get Hollywood to get behind such a cause. /Sarc
Depleted uranium from nuclear (knu-Klee-er) power plants should be used as an alloying agent in stainless steel straws. Washable, reusable, long lasting, easily detected if lost or misplaced, can not be smuggled onto airliners, and California could quickly put a high dollar redemption value on them assuring they’d never end up in the trash… plus the homeless could use quantities of them in the winter to keep warm.
Make straws GREEN!
Depleted uranium comes from processing uranium. It’s what is left after the radioactive isotope is removed. It was never anywhere near a nuclear power plant.
“The countries polluting the oceans the most.”
I had commented on another story here about a week ago about my suspicion – I knew there would be data saying that while we the USA are the target of the Wealth Guilt, it is most likely not us responsible for the “floating islands of trash,” all of the sea animals caught in discarded nets, etc.
We are we, the USA, the target of this campaign? Marxists have been using the White Guilt and the Racism thing to weaken our society. We are the main force interfering with the global Communism take-over plans they have been working on for 100 years. We are really getting softened up. Any slight criticism we whimper and roll over.
If the USA bans plastic straws, from sea to shining sea, nothing will get better. We are not the cause. However, there will be more entrenched infrastructure to supposedly monitor this disaster, and so the Marxists will have yet another avenue for entrenching themselves into government, and building this supposed catastrophe into college curricula, for the brainwashing of our kids. That is the goal. Not trash in the ocean.
The picture should be subtitled – The face you make when you thought you were saving the planet and suddenly realized you are just a useful idiot holding a giant straw
“The plastic straw ban movement was started by a 9 year old kid named Milo Cress ” Many countries have banned single use plastics: https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/plastic-bans-around-the-world/
Using a pejorative statement like “invented by a 9 year old kid” ( gufaaw gufaaw ) is below you WUWT, please stop it. You risk building a reputation for being anti environmentalist and therefore weaken your reputation on CO2. Stop it, destroying the CO2 myth is too important!
I see you got 1 ‘like’ for your ridiculous comment. I started to give you another ‘like’ just to make you feel better, but chose to skip it instead. Did you ‘like’ yourself or is there another passing troll?
Oh, I can see it how. Some street person selling plastic straws instead of pencils.
There are two types of plastic in the ocean. Those that float like poly and those that sink like nylon. Those that sink are much less of à problem.
Of those that float the are two types. Those that resist sunlight and those that don’t. Those that break apart quickly in sunlight are much less a problem.
Banning plastic bags and straws is a stupid solution. It is the equivalent of putting a bandage on melanom. normally nylon rope lasts for years in the tropics. But the Chinese s3ll a fake nylon that turns to dust in less than a year in the tropics.
The fake nylon is a disaster if you buy it to tie up your boat. It is perfect if you want to minimize pollution.
Another example of the Left’s bias against the elderly and disabled. They push “renewable” energy which raises electricity and heating costs for those on fixed incomes and now the injured, paraplegics and those with limited upper body movement will have no option but to have someone use a funnel to pour liquids into their mouth. Kill off the elderly, mentally challenged and the handicapped – they serve no function in a Big Brother society whatsoever. Leave only the young takers and compliant followers, Government will always be there to provide and protect.
The world is splitting into two parts – those with common sense and brainwashed Marxists. Unfortunately it is the latter that is winning all the small battles.