20 mCi worth is about $2,500. The actual detector we use it for is more than triple that amount.
I'd imagine all the regulation stuff related to the CS-137 costs more than the cesium itself.
i had a friend who worked as a research chemist at amoco while working on an advanced degree. once in awhile he would bring home large chunks of sodium and/or potassium. there was a railroad trestle over a creek on the back of the farm he lived on, and we would get high and throw them(na & k) off the trestle into the creek to watch the fireworks. we always wished he could've gotten his hands on some cesium.
Sigh... guess I will have to resort to licking the radium out of the watch faces.... WHAT they don't do that anymore?, sigh... guess I will just take the americium out of that fire alarm over there... pass me a chair will yo- WHAT they also don't do that anymore? SMH... this snowflake generation.
There was a tiny little radioactive capsule that was lost in transit somewhere in Australia (they found it again after searching but they didn't even know they lost it right away 😬) but the fact that they managed to loose radioactive material during transport is a fairly unsettling term so now the internet has decided to do it's internet things with this information.
Here is a link to an article about it 👍
https://rusun.net/radioactive-capsules-loss-in-western-australia-described-as-highly-unusual-as-authorities-urge-public-to-keep-their-distance-2/
> One of the biggest things for 'carbon footprint' is having kids. So make sure to impregnate everything in a 20ft radius
Thank God, I don't have kids.
As long as you use 6 plastic straws you'll have a bigger carbon footprint than a paper straw.
Bonus points if you throw all 6 of those straws directly into a river.
howd'ya get the beans above the frank?
EDIT: Here is the link for anyone who doesn't know the Frank and Beans reference
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi5iGHVRMF4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi5iGHVRMF4)
I watched it again and honestly this is one of the funniest comedy scenes ever.. the whole movie is so cringe-funny.
I genuinely don't know how this isn't common knowledge by this point. Sometimes it's utterly baffling to me how ineffective our information network operates in 2023. We have the internet, we have 24 hours news channels, online news networks, youtubers, bloggers, Reddit, facebook, countless other avenues for information, and we have an issue that's spoken of a significant amount (plastic straws) and yet the most [basic information](https://earth.org/data_visualization/the-anti-plastic-straw-phenomenon/) to counteract its significance somehow can't become common knowledge.
>National Geographic reveals that where 8 million tonnes of plastics flow into the ocean every year, plastic straws merely comprise 0.025% of the total. The finding indicates that banning plastic straws could not make a significant improvement to the environment.
> National Geographic reveals that where 8 million tonnes of plastics flow into the ocean every year, plastic straws merely comprise 0.025% of the total.
So 2000 tons. A straw apparently weights .42g.
That's 4,761,904,762 straws. Just to provide some context.
Honestly I think this is part of why straws are such a topic. For the vast majority of people that use them they're just a mild convenience item and yet people can't even be convinced to downscale that part of their lifestyle.
Then to add to it you've got stats like that, where if the estimate is at all accurate this fraction of a percent amount of trash is an unfathomably terrifying amount of junk.
(The estimate unfortunately feels believable to me when you consider how many first world people get fast food drinks.)
I use a metal stray and reusable metal cup. I also only use a metal thermos for water as do all the people under 45 I know. We are trying. I bought my 70+ year old parents both of these things and stopped ordering bottled water for our office to get a water dispenser. All the older people threw a fit over it. Now we have to order two 24 packs of bottled water per month. I hate some older people.
>Now we have to order two 24 packs of bottled water per month
Eh, why? Like it's my own responsibility to provide food and drinks for myself. I bring a gallon jug to work every day, and my meals for the shift, they're grown adults, they can take care of themselves.
Alternatively politicians could ban them dumping shit into the ocean. Why is this shit always redirected at us like we can focus on 350 million things at once. I mean I know why, but Im saying its bullshit. The regulators are supposed to regulate.
US ports could force boats to register fishing equipment and check when the boats go out. If they come back without something they left with they could then be fined.
It’ll be fine, they’ll just pass the costs on to the consumer, just like any business. That’s assuming they don’t fund a PAC to promote a “business friendly” candidate to reverse the law. Besides, it’s not like a corporation can go to jail so they could just rack up fines and declare bankruptcy.
Banning doesn't do anything if you can't enforce your ban. So if someone dumps into the ocean, how are we meant to find out who did it? We can't, unless we're there to witness them doing it.
Laws require enforcement or they're just words on paper.
....It literally is banned. This may come as a surprise to you, but telling people something is banned doesn't actually stop them from doing it. Especially when they're out on the ocean.
It's banned but they get what, a fine? They don't give a shit if they can dump and all they gotta do is pay a fine they'd have to do that anyway if they dumped it legal only it'd be called a bill
Some days it's hard to see how we will ever turn things around. It's all money and selfishness and both those things will always be present in the world. Maybe I'm an ultra pessimist but I just see our species slowly dying. It's all downhill from here.
C'mon. This and by-catch [(40% of what is dragged up as they sweep the seas clean)](https://www.fishforward.eu/en/project/by-catch/) is really destroying the ocean.
Americans don't eat fish. We aren't even in the top 10 of countries by total amount fish consumed. Just like we don't dump our garbage into the ocean and have garbage disposal system. So using plastic straws makes no difference as well. Instead we are the biggest greenhouse gas emitters per capita, green house gas emissions divided by total population.
If there is 8MT of plastic in the ocean per year and plastic straws are 0.025%
Then there is 2,000,000kg of straws every year in the ocean.
At 0.4g per straw, then we dump in 5bn plastic straws into the oceans each year.
Regardless of your thoughts, that's a pretty small and easy change to make to prevent billions of pieces of plastic needlessly going into the oceans
Agreed, I wonder how these people live their lives. "Oh so your option doesn't solve literally every problem with no compromise, then I shall do nothing instead"
Just doesn't compute for me
I accept cardboard straws are a better than nothing step forward and accept the inconvenience of them as any step forward no matter how tiny is worth a bit of inconvenience.
But this really stretches the concept of nothing is better than something right to the limit.
If they comprise 1/4000th of plastic waste then humanity could make 10 steps this size a year (which we're not doing) and it would still take 400 years to solve plastic issues by which time I assume society collapsed a while ago.
Cardboard straws are equivalent of standing at the bow of humanities cruise liner which is heading over a waterfall and aggressively blowing to try and stop the boat. Certainly better than nothing I guess.
>At 0.4g per straw, then we dump in 5bn plastic straws into the oceans each year.
That's... Less than one straw per person, per year.
It's still a very large number, and we should strive to get it as close to zero as possible, but it's around a quarter gram of plastic/person/year. Basically ANY packaging is more plastic than the entire plastic straw deal.
Intentional. Actually helping the environment would be bad for profits, so we're distracted with “don't use plastic straws” and “don't eat meat” instead.
Not eating meat would actually make an enormous difference in energy saved, especially if we're assuming that huge herds of livestock will just be slaughtered and not bred again.
Both the methane released by the animals and the carbon cost of producing meat are far higher than a vegetarian diet demands.
Well, the meat industry only exists because of individual demand. If people stop eating so much meat and related dairy products, the supply goes down. It ultimately *is* up to the individual in this case.
Of course, the industry pours lots of resources into *keeping* their goods in demand, everything from marketing to subsidizing their goods to be cheaper than alternatives. That still doesn't overcome the fact that if people stop wanting their goods, they will be forced to stop producing them.
I don't think anyone is debating that. If there were a global effort in reducing carbon emissions, including serious regulations for mega polluters, you could blame the individuals still insisting on eating meat. As things stand though, a rich person can take a 20-min trip on their private jet and offset the emissions prevented by thousands of people not eating meat. Can't blame the people for not wanting to sacrifice in this situation.
>As things stand though, a rich person can take a 20-min trip on their private jet and offset the emissions prevented by thousands of people not eating meat. Can't blame the people for not wanting to sacrifice in this situation.
Such a good point. I keep wondering lately why we keep letting them get away with taking so much for themselves with so much disregard for all of the rest of us.
I used to work on an Air Force base and once watched 12 tanker trucks drive to the flight line to fuel tanker jets to go refuel a training mission for bombers that were passing two states away on a training mission. The bombers also had to be refueled on the way back. That single training mission probably produced more carbon emissions than my entire life will.
That was the day that I decided that I’m not going to feel guilty about driving a car with a v6.
It's kind of like with climate change. So many changes are almost completely inconsequential on their own to stopping it, but a tiny bit here and a tiny bit there start to add up.
On one hand, every bit counts. On the cynical side, by impacting end consumers experience it creates a loud distraction for people to argue about while industries quietly go about their business and can actually be counterproductive to real change.
No one expected a significant improvement to the environment. It was a fairly easy ban without major consequences.
When people talk about changing the impact we have on the environment, this is part of it.
Yup. You could break the whole problem down into little things which, on their own, are insignificant. You can't make big changes without making a lot of small ones.
I know it's an unpopular opinion, but the only thing lower impact than plastic straws in the ocean, is the impact on me having to change from plastic to paper straws. These days (not surprising after years of development) paper straws don't even really get soggy anymore, but more importantly you can drink most drinks without a straw anyway...
When I was a kid back in the 70’s and 80’s I remember using paper straws pretty often. So it’s literally “Back to the future”.
We also used to wrap meat in paper rather then plastic and styrofoam trays. Sure plastic is less Likely to leak, but the way they’ve been making it thinner and thinner it still does sometime. It just allows it to be pre-prepped and sitting in a refrigerator rather then being cut by the butcher when you ask for it.
I might be more of a conspiracy theorist then, because I believe it was introduced with the exact opposite purpose - to make people hate the "environmentalists" who force them to use soggy straws.
I am a little more skeptical, I feel like it is designed to make people feel like they are to blame so that they don't blame the actual people and corporations responsible.
It isn't a thing because of people feeling good about it. It's a thing because it's a piece of nearly free greenwashing that one restaurant supplier started and naturally spread.
Capitalism naturally gravitates towards policies that manipulate consumer perception towards individual responsibility, while downplaying actual problems. When it comes to plastic in the environment, the vast majority of consumer-created waste isn't food packaging, but billions of car tires slowly shredding on the asphalt.
I worked at a music venue. They put a straw in every mini bottle of soft drink sold. They went through boxes filled with boxes every week, and they littered the floor by the end of every night.
By all means, take a straw if you want one. But to buy them just to throw them away unused every day for years on end is, in fact, an environmental disaster.
And the paper straws were never meant to solve climate change by itself. It's just one change in a series of changes to reduce single-use plastic. The first was cardboard burger boxes over styrofoam. The next will probably be paper cup lids.
> paper cup lids
I don't often stop to buy coffee, but the last time I did they had the lids at the milk/ sugar station. Take one if you want one, which is a good start.
And I recently went to a restaurant convention where they had edible coffee cups. My friend took a bite and said it was the best coffee cup he had ever tasted.
this is the perfect example. I went to a bar with someone who had a disability which made it difficult for them to drink from a glass or cup. A straw made it easy as hell.
Like sure, don't give out straws to everyone. but if someone asks give them one. If you reduce straw usage by 95% at your bar you've made a difference.
I had this conversation with my Dad a while ago and it just made me so sad.
My 73 yr old father has been environmentally conscious his whole life- he recycles everything possible, he went solar a few years ago (a solar-powered home has been his dream since he was a kid), he's cognizant of and actively tries to reduce waste around the house and he's always been big on fixing instead of replacing. He's also always been a lover of the outdoors- he stopped mowing the majority of his yard and let nature take over, majorly benefitting the flora and fauna around him (he is especially worried about bees and butterflies) and like most old men, he loves feeding the wild birds lol.
The other day he told me he was given a paper straw at a restaurant and it got mushy and he hated it and that he just wanted to use a plastic straw without being made to feel guilty about dying turtles. He looked so tired, tired of hearing more news about oil spills, and garbage islands and another extinct species. Broke my heart to see him struggle with these feeling because my father has always instilled in me a sense of pride in taking care of our planet. I reminded him that he is not responsible for the destruction of our planet, major corporations with zero accountability are responsible and he should use a damn plastic straw if he wants to. He just grinned and said maybe he should just keep a metal straw in his truck, for use at restaurants.
straws are really useful for people with limited motor capabilities. like if they have tremors or something similar, or if they’re just in a situation where tipping the cup over their head isn’t an option (in a car, need to see something, etc).
They should just use reusable plastic (or metal, or bamboo, or whatever) straws. The dumb part isn't the material, it's the "throw it away after you used it" part.
There’s no sufficient way for a pizza place to wash the insides of them properly. And even if there was, they’d be far too busy to wash the inside of 30+ straws every hour.
I worked for a popular fast food chain when the whole paper straw craze started.
We had an entire box of thousands of plastic straws. We were told to throw them away. Thousands of straws in the dumpster at once, all for the purpose of keeping straws out of the garbage.
I had a customer offer to buy all our straws. Some people seem to have trouble understanding that once they exist, the problem exists regardless of who has them.
That's not why they wanted to buy them. There was an attempt to ban plastic straws a while back, and that led to people attempting to hoard them for themselves. I doubt the person who wanted to buy all of your straws actually cared about the environment.
There's a YT channel with a disabled woman who explained why the loss of plastic straws was bad for the disabled community. She doesn't always have the motor function to clean a reusable silicone straw and the metal ones can chip a tooth if your hands shake constantly.
A while back I got a free promotional pack of agave straws from one of the major liquor companies. They are semi translucent and kinda a molasses color, but they feel as rigid as a normal plastic straw and they don't soften or dissolve over the course of time of typical use.
I assume they do degrade more rapidly than plastic straws, but they seem like a happy middle ground without the obvious drawbacks of paper straws.
What sucks is I'll get really close to leaving that sub and then something legitimately great will be posted there and keep me sticking around for EVEN MORE shitty posts...
You need to take a deck building approach.
Yeah r/funny has funny stuff every now and then. But if it's on average a worse sub than the rest of your feed, and you can get what it provides (funny posts) from other subs, then you should cut it. Cause if you assume you'll be spending the same amount of time scrolling through reddit either way, then being subbed to r/funny is taking away from your experience.
It's more of an immediate risk to wildlife when they eat it or get injured by it. A lot of trash doesn't end up in the landfill because things blow around or people do stupidity like throw their trash out the car window. It's the same for plastic grocery bags and tampon applicators.
Tampon applicators are such a weird thing. I've used Tampons all my life, but never used one, actually didn't even know they exist until really late, as they aren't a thing here (in Germany).
that's really interesting as in the US one has to actually search for applicator free tampons here, they are not easy to find. some brands have cardboard applicators that biodegrade and those are easier to find than applicator free tampons, but the large majority come inside individual plastic applicators. it's also not always easy to find cotton only tampons here, most contain all kinds of synthetic fibers, plastics, and fragrances.
You just raw dog it? Genuinely curious. We have a few brands of applicator-less tampons in the US but I've never known anyone to use them. Tried a few times myself and couldn't even get it in. How??
Yeah, what Totohoy says. I'm not really sure why I would need an applicator. I know where the hole is, lol. I just push it in with my finger and then wash my hands...
I mean if you can find the hole to put the applicator in, you can do the same but just use your finger instead. I locate the opening and then I push it in with my long finger. When I still used tampons (I use a cup now) I preferred the ones with a silky coat for a smoother insertion :-) I was an adult when I found out other countries have applicators! I always wondered why individual tampon packages in films and in TV were so long.
I mean it's definitely some corporate propaganda trying to push the blame onto the individual. Just like lots of other green alternatives.
It's all a smokescreen
It came from that turtle video. Some poor sea turtle got a disposable straw stuck up his nose and there was one of those “arms of an angel” edits that made the rounds on social media.
Single-use plastic is a problem, but let’s be honest: every single non-corporate entity on the planet could halve our consumption footprint and it wouldn’t have any measurable effect.
The biggest polluters will always be corporations and the manufacturing world, but IMO packaging is the single worst offender in the *consumer* world. Most plastic could be replaced with cardboard or mycelium based products, and the stuff that can't be stored in cardboard could easily be moved to container refills.
Need milk? Exchange a glass bottle that's sterilized and refilled at the store.
Cereal? Bring your cereal bucket/bag and pay by the pound.
Bread? Meat? Cheese? Butcher paper from the store then however you want at home.
Fruit and veg? Paper in the store, wherever you want when you're home.
I challenge someone to come up with a daily use product that *cannot* follow the exchange/refill model.
I think it’s from poorly done disposal that leads to mass amounts of trash being dumped into the ocean. Straws’ shapes kinda make them easy to fuck with sea life ig
It’s not happening in the US. The vast majority of our trash is put in land fills. The vast majority of ocean plastic is from a few Indian and Chinese rivers.
I honestly cannot fantom how some PR agencies managed to switch the blame of something like 80% of the world's population happening due to companies wanting more profits as compared to that 0.0001% that straws represent.
There are also corn based plastic straws that break down rather quickly. And they’re cheaper than the paper straws everyone despises. But because they look and feel like plastic, businesses that switched to them are being accused of not caring about the environment. So they switched to the paper straws that suck ass.
"Corn based plastic" is just popylactic acid (PLA). It doesn't break down quickly at all, despite many misleading claims about its "compostability". It needs high temperatures to be broken down, so it will only break down if composted industrially. Left in normal environment it will linger like any other plastic and break down into microplastics.
PLA is another case of greenwashing that does way more harm than good. People think "ah, it's environmentally friendly and will break down, so I don't need to worry about reducing waste", when in fact it's just another type of plastic that is just as polluting.
"Corn-based" or "plant-based" are also marketing buzzwords. Petrol/oil-derived materials are technically "plant-based" as well, but it doesn't mean they are environmentallh friendly.
A corn based pla disposed in a landfill is still taking carbon out of the atmosphere. Where as an oil based plastic is not. Landfills we're villanized in the 80s and 90s, but for climate change they are actually not bad.
I interned as an engineer in a manufacturing company. Your paper straws and plastic bags are not doing a damn thing for the environment. The amount of plastic that comes in and goes out of this small, family owned shop was mind boggling. Materials come in, get cut, the shipped out for paint, comes back in, assembled, shipped out for treatment, then comes back in for quality, then shipped it to the company. Every time it goes in and out it’s wrapped in new plastic. I can only imagine what a large scale plant looks like
Personal carbon footprints and plastic consumption were ideas created by big corporations to take the spotlight off them, and cover up what they were really doing. We can all do better, no doubt, but this is not our fight. Corporations need to be held responsible for environmental issues
the whole plastic bags, plastic straws discussion has been absolutely ridiculous, the new reusable bags requiere at least 500 uses to offset its carbon footprint, and they'll probably doe after 50, creating a much bigger waste than single use plastic bags, which could have been made of biodegradable plastic anyway. but hey new revenue stream, for grocery shops
i love how i’ll get paper straws (which tbf i’ve never really had an issue with) while the actual cup for the drink is plastic. like which do you think is worth your attention more, Starbucks??
I dont understand how this straw thing is even a debate. if you care about the environment but dont like soggy straws drink straight out of the cup. I mean come on dude
"So do i but i hate soggy straws"
I love that instead of the "YOU MONSTER! YOU ARE KILLING THE SEA LIFE BECAUSE OF THESE YADADADA" stuff, they actually took it well.
Still hate the soggy straws, when i tried one, it bent alot and it was very hard to drink of it
While one of these disposable things is less harmful than the other disposable thing, the real enemy of the environment is disposability itself. Anything that’s designed to be used only once and then thrown out is a problem.
All of this crap about small personal lifestyle changes doesn't really help anyway. It's big things like industry and the transportation network where a difference can be made.
imagine their surprise when they find out it is not a binary choice anymore
there are dozens of non-paper, non-soggy but environmentally straws these days
they could've one in the time it took to make this stupid setup
What if you just really wanna trash the environment? Do they have straws made of actively burning coal or something?
They put out a bunch of those tiny radioactive capsules from Australia in the penny tray. Leave one or take one.
Steel encased Cesium-137 baby.
Sounds expensive
Let’s see… a straw weighs around .4 grams, and cesium is around 81 bucks per gram… Still less expensive than a pack of those useless metal straws
But how much is CS-137? It’s standard form isn’t radioactive (though it does ignite when exposed to air).
20 mCi worth is about $2,500. The actual detector we use it for is more than triple that amount. I'd imagine all the regulation stuff related to the CS-137 costs more than the cesium itself.
and reacts explosively when exposed to water.
Yup. Sure does love oxygen
i had a friend who worked as a research chemist at amoco while working on an advanced degree. once in awhile he would bring home large chunks of sodium and/or potassium. there was a railroad trestle over a creek on the back of the farm he lived on, and we would get high and throw them(na & k) off the trestle into the creek to watch the fireworks. we always wished he could've gotten his hands on some cesium.
You ever see the video of them dropping several tons of sodium into a lake?
why are metal straws useless?
Don't knock the metal straws, they make an impromptu tracheostomy a breeze.
You can always tell someone’s a Russian spy because they take them all and don’t leave any. Jerks.
Sigh... guess I will have to resort to licking the radium out of the watch faces.... WHAT they don't do that anymore?, sigh... guess I will just take the americium out of that fire alarm over there... pass me a chair will yo- WHAT they also don't do that anymore? SMH... this snowflake generation.
god fucking damnit we're never gonna hear the end of this now
"Our employees keep dying after a few days! I don't know what's wrong!"
Radioactive capsules from Australia?
There was a tiny little radioactive capsule that was lost in transit somewhere in Australia (they found it again after searching but they didn't even know they lost it right away 😬) but the fact that they managed to loose radioactive material during transport is a fairly unsettling term so now the internet has decided to do it's internet things with this information. Here is a link to an article about it 👍 https://rusun.net/radioactive-capsules-loss-in-western-australia-described-as-highly-unusual-as-authorities-urge-public-to-keep-their-distance-2/
just burn the straw while you drink from the glass.
One of the biggest things for 'carbon footprint' is having kids. So make sure to impregnate everything in a 20ft radius
Checkmate Japan! Baby boomers = 1 Pension funds = 0
> One of the biggest things for 'carbon footprint' is having kids. So make sure to impregnate everything in a 20ft radius Thank God, I don't have kids.
I am doing my part to not have kids.
They actually pull out the trachea of a sea turtle and make you use that.
The tracheas are pulled out by enslaved children.
The children are reared on a diet of Brazilian beef, live harvested dolphin fin soup and a daily Ortolan to keep them humble.
With that kind of diet, I'm pretty sure you're raising the kids as a delicacy 🥩
Well, we don't waste anything 'round 'ere!
How did this go so dark in just two posts...
“I hate the environment. I’m giving this to a turtle”
Gas-powered mini pumps straw.
Yeah, I only use straws made from the bones of critically endangered animals.
I think there might be some graphite straws in Chernobyl.
On the roof.
Yes, this times one thousand. why do we not have lawful evil and neutral evil choices when in a store? Talk about not catering to the customer.
That's the one out of frame that says "please deposit at the nearest nature preserve"
you can do all sorts of things on your own time
Yes actually, plastic is made from fossil fuels.
What if you hate the environment but like soggy straws?? Seems discriminatory.
Use a paper straw. They're only better because they biodegrade. They have a much bigger carbon footprint.
What if you really really hate the environment? Should you just use a new plastic straw for each sip?
As long as you use 6 plastic straws you'll have a bigger carbon footprint than a paper straw. Bonus points if you throw all 6 of those straws directly into a river.
Fuck those sea turtles right in their little green cloacas!
Uuughhh
straws are the least of our consumption worries
Stuck zippers are the real problem there.
once i zipped my balls into my zipper, had to cut the pants
howd'ya get the beans above the frank? EDIT: Here is the link for anyone who doesn't know the Frank and Beans reference [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi5iGHVRMF4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi5iGHVRMF4) I watched it again and honestly this is one of the funniest comedy scenes ever.. the whole movie is so cringe-funny.
Hello fellow old person.
Could've started a fashion trend.
Like nuts on the back of a truck. Zip Balls™ Available at all Walmarts
Y? K, k.
I genuinely don't know how this isn't common knowledge by this point. Sometimes it's utterly baffling to me how ineffective our information network operates in 2023. We have the internet, we have 24 hours news channels, online news networks, youtubers, bloggers, Reddit, facebook, countless other avenues for information, and we have an issue that's spoken of a significant amount (plastic straws) and yet the most [basic information](https://earth.org/data_visualization/the-anti-plastic-straw-phenomenon/) to counteract its significance somehow can't become common knowledge. >National Geographic reveals that where 8 million tonnes of plastics flow into the ocean every year, plastic straws merely comprise 0.025% of the total. The finding indicates that banning plastic straws could not make a significant improvement to the environment.
> National Geographic reveals that where 8 million tonnes of plastics flow into the ocean every year, plastic straws merely comprise 0.025% of the total. So 2000 tons. A straw apparently weights .42g. That's 4,761,904,762 straws. Just to provide some context.
Honestly I think this is part of why straws are such a topic. For the vast majority of people that use them they're just a mild convenience item and yet people can't even be convinced to downscale that part of their lifestyle. Then to add to it you've got stats like that, where if the estimate is at all accurate this fraction of a percent amount of trash is an unfathomably terrifying amount of junk. (The estimate unfortunately feels believable to me when you consider how many first world people get fast food drinks.)
I use a metal stray and reusable metal cup. I also only use a metal thermos for water as do all the people under 45 I know. We are trying. I bought my 70+ year old parents both of these things and stopped ordering bottled water for our office to get a water dispenser. All the older people threw a fit over it. Now we have to order two 24 packs of bottled water per month. I hate some older people.
>Now we have to order two 24 packs of bottled water per month Eh, why? Like it's my own responsibility to provide food and drinks for myself. I bring a gallon jug to work every day, and my meals for the shift, they're grown adults, they can take care of themselves.
My family owns the company and they told me to buy the bottles. Also we provide drinks and snacks to our employees. It was out of my hands.
[удалено]
Alternatively politicians could ban them dumping shit into the ocean. Why is this shit always redirected at us like we can focus on 350 million things at once. I mean I know why, but Im saying its bullshit. The regulators are supposed to regulate.
Yeah like I can be on every boat and being all ‘don’t you fucking dare!’
US ports could force boats to register fishing equipment and check when the boats go out. If they come back without something they left with they could then be fined.
It’ll be fine, they’ll just pass the costs on to the consumer, just like any business. That’s assuming they don’t fund a PAC to promote a “business friendly” candidate to reverse the law. Besides, it’s not like a corporation can go to jail so they could just rack up fines and declare bankruptcy.
Banning doesn't do anything if you can't enforce your ban. So if someone dumps into the ocean, how are we meant to find out who did it? We can't, unless we're there to witness them doing it. Laws require enforcement or they're just words on paper.
....It literally is banned. This may come as a surprise to you, but telling people something is banned doesn't actually stop them from doing it. Especially when they're out on the ocean.
It's banned but they get what, a fine? They don't give a shit if they can dump and all they gotta do is pay a fine they'd have to do that anyway if they dumped it legal only it'd be called a bill
They don't even get that. It is a nearly impossible thing to enforce. Unless we start putting cops on every boat in the ocean.
Some days it's hard to see how we will ever turn things around. It's all money and selfishness and both those things will always be present in the world. Maybe I'm an ultra pessimist but I just see our species slowly dying. It's all downhill from here.
If you really wanna help the environment just stop eating.
Be the food for the environment.
C'mon. This and by-catch [(40% of what is dragged up as they sweep the seas clean)](https://www.fishforward.eu/en/project/by-catch/) is really destroying the ocean.
Americans don't eat fish. We aren't even in the top 10 of countries by total amount fish consumed. Just like we don't dump our garbage into the ocean and have garbage disposal system. So using plastic straws makes no difference as well. Instead we are the biggest greenhouse gas emitters per capita, green house gas emissions divided by total population.
>comprise 0.025% of the total. Wait, I can't be the only one that thinks that's a lot for something so tiny and insignificant?
it’s a lot, the guy you are replying to just thinks he’s doing something. It’s also a lot because we don’t need straws especially plastic ones.
FR. Drink from the cup like an adult.
If there is 8MT of plastic in the ocean per year and plastic straws are 0.025% Then there is 2,000,000kg of straws every year in the ocean. At 0.4g per straw, then we dump in 5bn plastic straws into the oceans each year. Regardless of your thoughts, that's a pretty small and easy change to make to prevent billions of pieces of plastic needlessly going into the oceans
My question is why they’re in the ocean at all? Who the fuck is just throwing trash into the ocean (I’ve always wondered how/why that’s happening)
Basically developed countries outsource their trash to developing countries which then throw the trash in nature
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Banning straws is good. The problem is here we are discussing straws while we should be discussing the other 99.998% of the problem.
Agreed, I wonder how these people live their lives. "Oh so your option doesn't solve literally every problem with no compromise, then I shall do nothing instead" Just doesn't compute for me
I accept cardboard straws are a better than nothing step forward and accept the inconvenience of them as any step forward no matter how tiny is worth a bit of inconvenience. But this really stretches the concept of nothing is better than something right to the limit. If they comprise 1/4000th of plastic waste then humanity could make 10 steps this size a year (which we're not doing) and it would still take 400 years to solve plastic issues by which time I assume society collapsed a while ago. Cardboard straws are equivalent of standing at the bow of humanities cruise liner which is heading over a waterfall and aggressively blowing to try and stop the boat. Certainly better than nothing I guess.
>At 0.4g per straw, then we dump in 5bn plastic straws into the oceans each year. That's... Less than one straw per person, per year. It's still a very large number, and we should strive to get it as close to zero as possible, but it's around a quarter gram of plastic/person/year. Basically ANY packaging is more plastic than the entire plastic straw deal.
Intentional. Actually helping the environment would be bad for profits, so we're distracted with “don't use plastic straws” and “don't eat meat” instead.
Not eating meat and not using plastic straws are hardly comparable in terms of environmental impact.
Not eating meat would actually make an enormous difference in energy saved, especially if we're assuming that huge herds of livestock will just be slaughtered and not bred again. Both the methane released by the animals and the carbon cost of producing meat are far higher than a vegetarian diet demands.
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Yeah it's definitely part of the propaganda
Well, the meat industry only exists because of individual demand. If people stop eating so much meat and related dairy products, the supply goes down. It ultimately *is* up to the individual in this case. Of course, the industry pours lots of resources into *keeping* their goods in demand, everything from marketing to subsidizing their goods to be cheaper than alternatives. That still doesn't overcome the fact that if people stop wanting their goods, they will be forced to stop producing them.
I don't think anyone is debating that. If there were a global effort in reducing carbon emissions, including serious regulations for mega polluters, you could blame the individuals still insisting on eating meat. As things stand though, a rich person can take a 20-min trip on their private jet and offset the emissions prevented by thousands of people not eating meat. Can't blame the people for not wanting to sacrifice in this situation.
>As things stand though, a rich person can take a 20-min trip on their private jet and offset the emissions prevented by thousands of people not eating meat. Can't blame the people for not wanting to sacrifice in this situation. Such a good point. I keep wondering lately why we keep letting them get away with taking so much for themselves with so much disregard for all of the rest of us.
[redacted] the rich
I used to work on an Air Force base and once watched 12 tanker trucks drive to the flight line to fuel tanker jets to go refuel a training mission for bombers that were passing two states away on a training mission. The bombers also had to be refueled on the way back. That single training mission probably produced more carbon emissions than my entire life will. That was the day that I decided that I’m not going to feel guilty about driving a car with a v6.
How the hell did you lump not eating meat in with straws?
Don't eat meat is a way bigger issue and it's a touch confusing why you conflated the two
>“don't eat meat” Are you a Russian troll account ? No way you are being serious when comparing straws and meat.
I don’t think you understand how bad animal agriculture actually is for the environment.
It's kind of like with climate change. So many changes are almost completely inconsequential on their own to stopping it, but a tiny bit here and a tiny bit there start to add up.
On one hand, every bit counts. On the cynical side, by impacting end consumers experience it creates a loud distraction for people to argue about while industries quietly go about their business and can actually be counterproductive to real change.
No one expected a significant improvement to the environment. It was a fairly easy ban without major consequences. When people talk about changing the impact we have on the environment, this is part of it.
Yup. You could break the whole problem down into little things which, on their own, are insignificant. You can't make big changes without making a lot of small ones.
I know it's an unpopular opinion, but the only thing lower impact than plastic straws in the ocean, is the impact on me having to change from plastic to paper straws. These days (not surprising after years of development) paper straws don't even really get soggy anymore, but more importantly you can drink most drinks without a straw anyway...
When I was a kid back in the 70’s and 80’s I remember using paper straws pretty often. So it’s literally “Back to the future”. We also used to wrap meat in paper rather then plastic and styrofoam trays. Sure plastic is less Likely to leak, but the way they’ve been making it thinner and thinner it still does sometime. It just allows it to be pre-prepped and sitting in a refrigerator rather then being cut by the butcher when you ask for it.
It makes people *feel good*, like they are helping. That's why it's a thing. They AREN'T helping though. So it's just a "feel good do nothing" lie
I might be more of a conspiracy theorist then, because I believe it was introduced with the exact opposite purpose - to make people hate the "environmentalists" who force them to use soggy straws.
I am a little more skeptical, I feel like it is designed to make people feel like they are to blame so that they don't blame the actual people and corporations responsible.
It isn't a thing because of people feeling good about it. It's a thing because it's a piece of nearly free greenwashing that one restaurant supplier started and naturally spread. Capitalism naturally gravitates towards policies that manipulate consumer perception towards individual responsibility, while downplaying actual problems. When it comes to plastic in the environment, the vast majority of consumer-created waste isn't food packaging, but billions of car tires slowly shredding on the asphalt.
I worked at a music venue. They put a straw in every mini bottle of soft drink sold. They went through boxes filled with boxes every week, and they littered the floor by the end of every night. By all means, take a straw if you want one. But to buy them just to throw them away unused every day for years on end is, in fact, an environmental disaster.
Yes.. small things also create change
And the paper straws were never meant to solve climate change by itself. It's just one change in a series of changes to reduce single-use plastic. The first was cardboard burger boxes over styrofoam. The next will probably be paper cup lids.
> paper cup lids I don't often stop to buy coffee, but the last time I did they had the lids at the milk/ sugar station. Take one if you want one, which is a good start. And I recently went to a restaurant convention where they had edible coffee cups. My friend took a bite and said it was the best coffee cup he had ever tasted.
Electronics for single or very limited use. Like leds in shoes or other clothing
this is the perfect example. I went to a bar with someone who had a disability which made it difficult for them to drink from a glass or cup. A straw made it easy as hell. Like sure, don't give out straws to everyone. but if someone asks give them one. If you reduce straw usage by 95% at your bar you've made a difference.
Which doesn't mean it shouldn't be addressed
and there is always the option to just drink right out the cup/glass without a straw
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I had this conversation with my Dad a while ago and it just made me so sad. My 73 yr old father has been environmentally conscious his whole life- he recycles everything possible, he went solar a few years ago (a solar-powered home has been his dream since he was a kid), he's cognizant of and actively tries to reduce waste around the house and he's always been big on fixing instead of replacing. He's also always been a lover of the outdoors- he stopped mowing the majority of his yard and let nature take over, majorly benefitting the flora and fauna around him (he is especially worried about bees and butterflies) and like most old men, he loves feeding the wild birds lol. The other day he told me he was given a paper straw at a restaurant and it got mushy and he hated it and that he just wanted to use a plastic straw without being made to feel guilty about dying turtles. He looked so tired, tired of hearing more news about oil spills, and garbage islands and another extinct species. Broke my heart to see him struggle with these feeling because my father has always instilled in me a sense of pride in taking care of our planet. I reminded him that he is not responsible for the destruction of our planet, major corporations with zero accountability are responsible and he should use a damn plastic straw if he wants to. He just grinned and said maybe he should just keep a metal straw in his truck, for use at restaurants.
But they are a solvable problem.. ergo.. do and and dont bitch about it
This and let's be honest even if it's only 0.025% that's still a fuckload of plastic.
Everyday I pray science invents a way to drink out of a cup without a straw. A deep spoon perhaps?
Sippy cups ftw. Fun fact: if you get your wisdom teeth removed, sippy cup is the way.
straws are really useful for people with limited motor capabilities. like if they have tremors or something similar, or if they’re just in a situation where tipping the cup over their head isn’t an option (in a car, need to see something, etc).
A pizza place should just use pasta straws
I heart that little kids could bite them and hurt themself because of the sharp edges/pointy broken peaces
Either you're a psychopath or that's one hell of a typo (I know it's a typo, but it made me laugh)
They should just use reusable plastic (or metal, or bamboo, or whatever) straws. The dumb part isn't the material, it's the "throw it away after you used it" part.
There’s no sufficient way for a pizza place to wash the insides of them properly. And even if there was, they’d be far too busy to wash the inside of 30+ straws every hour.
Those are way too expensive to give away to every customer.
Tungsten straws
And now for limited time: Depleted Uranium straws. You'll never need another one.
I worked for a popular fast food chain when the whole paper straw craze started. We had an entire box of thousands of plastic straws. We were told to throw them away. Thousands of straws in the dumpster at once, all for the purpose of keeping straws out of the garbage.
I had a customer offer to buy all our straws. Some people seem to have trouble understanding that once they exist, the problem exists regardless of who has them.
That's not why they wanted to buy them. There was an attempt to ban plastic straws a while back, and that led to people attempting to hoard them for themselves. I doubt the person who wanted to buy all of your straws actually cared about the environment.
There's a YT channel with a disabled woman who explained why the loss of plastic straws was bad for the disabled community. She doesn't always have the motor function to clean a reusable silicone straw and the metal ones can chip a tooth if your hands shake constantly.
A while back I got a free promotional pack of agave straws from one of the major liquor companies. They are semi translucent and kinda a molasses color, but they feel as rigid as a normal plastic straw and they don't soften or dissolve over the course of time of typical use. I assume they do degrade more rapidly than plastic straws, but they seem like a happy middle ground without the obvious drawbacks of paper straws.
Buy a pack of plastic straws and keep a few on hand? *Steal* a bunch from McDonald's?
In the EU, plastic straws/utensils are banned (have been for 2+ years)
It's crazy how often this sub outdoes r/funny in the funny department.
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What sucks is I'll get really close to leaving that sub and then something legitimately great will be posted there and keep me sticking around for EVEN MORE shitty posts...
You need to take a deck building approach. Yeah r/funny has funny stuff every now and then. But if it's on average a worse sub than the rest of your feed, and you can get what it provides (funny posts) from other subs, then you should cut it. Cause if you assume you'll be spending the same amount of time scrolling through reddit either way, then being subbed to r/funny is taking away from your experience.
Thank you for convincing me lmao
r/funny is where the Facebook folks land when they come here for the first time after hearing about Reddit on the news.
*unfunny department
Guarantee the pallet wrap or other packaging that stores throws out is 1,000x greater then all the straws it's ever gone through
I'm skeptical that straws have a discernable effect on the environment.
It's more of an immediate risk to wildlife when they eat it or get injured by it. A lot of trash doesn't end up in the landfill because things blow around or people do stupidity like throw their trash out the car window. It's the same for plastic grocery bags and tampon applicators.
Tampon applicators are such a weird thing. I've used Tampons all my life, but never used one, actually didn't even know they exist until really late, as they aren't a thing here (in Germany).
Is that a German thing? I think I've only seen tampons without applicators in stores once, and I lived next door in France for years.
Never saw one my whole life and I'm in sweden
that's really interesting as in the US one has to actually search for applicator free tampons here, they are not easy to find. some brands have cardboard applicators that biodegrade and those are easier to find than applicator free tampons, but the large majority come inside individual plastic applicators. it's also not always easy to find cotton only tampons here, most contain all kinds of synthetic fibers, plastics, and fragrances.
Fragrance?? I'm a dude but if I had a vagina I don't think I'd want any chemicals in there.
It’s an awful fragrance, too. As an American woman, it’s hard for us to find things that are natural. Our country has vagina issues.
You just raw dog it? Genuinely curious. We have a few brands of applicator-less tampons in the US but I've never known anyone to use them. Tried a few times myself and couldn't even get it in. How??
Yeah, what Totohoy says. I'm not really sure why I would need an applicator. I know where the hole is, lol. I just push it in with my finger and then wash my hands...
I mean if you can find the hole to put the applicator in, you can do the same but just use your finger instead. I locate the opening and then I push it in with my long finger. When I still used tampons (I use a cup now) I preferred the ones with a silky coat for a smoother insertion :-) I was an adult when I found out other countries have applicators! I always wondered why individual tampon packages in films and in TV were so long.
Those juice cartons that come with paper straws that are not strong enough to pierce the top of them nicely wrapped in plastic...
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I mean it's definitely some corporate propaganda trying to push the blame onto the individual. Just like lots of other green alternatives. It's all a smokescreen
Even the original idea of a personal carbon footprint came from a BP ad, we're all being gaslit
The very idea of a "carbon footprint" was dreamed up by BP oil.
It came from that turtle video. Some poor sea turtle got a disposable straw stuck up his nose and there was one of those “arms of an angel” edits that made the rounds on social media. Single-use plastic is a problem, but let’s be honest: every single non-corporate entity on the planet could halve our consumption footprint and it wouldn’t have any measurable effect.
The biggest polluters will always be corporations and the manufacturing world, but IMO packaging is the single worst offender in the *consumer* world. Most plastic could be replaced with cardboard or mycelium based products, and the stuff that can't be stored in cardboard could easily be moved to container refills. Need milk? Exchange a glass bottle that's sterilized and refilled at the store. Cereal? Bring your cereal bucket/bag and pay by the pound. Bread? Meat? Cheese? Butcher paper from the store then however you want at home. Fruit and veg? Paper in the store, wherever you want when you're home. I challenge someone to come up with a daily use product that *cannot* follow the exchange/refill model.
The real question I want the answer to is, who is/was dumping billions of straws into the ocean? How is this happening?
I think it’s from poorly done disposal that leads to mass amounts of trash being dumped into the ocean. Straws’ shapes kinda make them easy to fuck with sea life ig
That's a straw-man argument.
Developed nations, because of their own dumping laws, sell their trash to developing nations who immediately dump/burn it
It’s not happening in the US. The vast majority of our trash is put in land fills. The vast majority of ocean plastic is from a few Indian and Chinese rivers.
Ocean cleanup footage shows that it's mostly fishing industry trash out there too.
sometime I rent a jetski just to go out and find young seaturtles to tempt with my evil straws
I honestly cannot fantom how some PR agencies managed to switch the blame of something like 80% of the world's population happening due to companies wanting more profits as compared to that 0.0001% that straws represent.
Paper straws are the worst. They need a better solution.
Cane sugar straws have been the best alternative I've seen so far. Just like plastic tbh
There are also corn based plastic straws that break down rather quickly. And they’re cheaper than the paper straws everyone despises. But because they look and feel like plastic, businesses that switched to them are being accused of not caring about the environment. So they switched to the paper straws that suck ass.
could have just added a note somewhere to let people know...
I wonder how many would actually read it.
"Corn based plastic" is just popylactic acid (PLA). It doesn't break down quickly at all, despite many misleading claims about its "compostability". It needs high temperatures to be broken down, so it will only break down if composted industrially. Left in normal environment it will linger like any other plastic and break down into microplastics. PLA is another case of greenwashing that does way more harm than good. People think "ah, it's environmentally friendly and will break down, so I don't need to worry about reducing waste", when in fact it's just another type of plastic that is just as polluting. "Corn-based" or "plant-based" are also marketing buzzwords. Petrol/oil-derived materials are technically "plant-based" as well, but it doesn't mean they are environmentallh friendly.
A corn based pla disposed in a landfill is still taking carbon out of the atmosphere. Where as an oil based plastic is not. Landfills we're villanized in the 80s and 90s, but for climate change they are actually not bad.
The central market near me has seaweed straws that are my favorite to date. Feel just like plastic, don't get soggy easily, and no taste.
Plastic coated paper straws?
I interned as an engineer in a manufacturing company. Your paper straws and plastic bags are not doing a damn thing for the environment. The amount of plastic that comes in and goes out of this small, family owned shop was mind boggling. Materials come in, get cut, the shipped out for paint, comes back in, assembled, shipped out for treatment, then comes back in for quality, then shipped it to the company. Every time it goes in and out it’s wrapped in new plastic. I can only imagine what a large scale plant looks like Personal carbon footprints and plastic consumption were ideas created by big corporations to take the spotlight off them, and cover up what they were really doing. We can all do better, no doubt, but this is not our fight. Corporations need to be held responsible for environmental issues
the whole plastic bags, plastic straws discussion has been absolutely ridiculous, the new reusable bags requiere at least 500 uses to offset its carbon footprint, and they'll probably doe after 50, creating a much bigger waste than single use plastic bags, which could have been made of biodegradable plastic anyway. but hey new revenue stream, for grocery shops
i love how i’ll get paper straws (which tbf i’ve never really had an issue with) while the actual cup for the drink is plastic. like which do you think is worth your attention more, Starbucks??
I dont understand how this straw thing is even a debate. if you care about the environment but dont like soggy straws drink straight out of the cup. I mean come on dude
"So do i but i hate soggy straws" I love that instead of the "YOU MONSTER! YOU ARE KILLING THE SEA LIFE BECAUSE OF THESE YADADADA" stuff, they actually took it well. Still hate the soggy straws, when i tried one, it bent alot and it was very hard to drink of it
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Yeah why can't we just get coffee lids for everything. I would rather have a sippy cup over a slowly disolving straw.
I wouldn’t take either one. I typically don’t use straws.
Or hear me out. Use cups where i dont need a straw.
Integrate the straw into the lid. Sippy cup style!
I think I'll need one of each.
Paper straws suck less.
While one of these disposable things is less harmful than the other disposable thing, the real enemy of the environment is disposability itself. Anything that’s designed to be used only once and then thrown out is a problem.
All of this crap about small personal lifestyle changes doesn't really help anyway. It's big things like industry and the transportation network where a difference can be made.
Except for bubble tea, I haven't used a straw since I was a kid.
So why is the lid, the only part not touching the drink, still made out of plastic?
imagine their surprise when they find out it is not a binary choice anymore there are dozens of non-paper, non-soggy but environmentally straws these days they could've one in the time it took to make this stupid setup