I can’t recall anyone ever being anything but nonplussed and skeptical about paper straws. From what I can tell, it was a product of a think tank that pushed into the news, which then caused businesses to treat that as though it were public demand and pushed it out to everyone, and most people shrugged, used the obviously inferior product (because it was free and the alternatives require attention), and then people got on with their day.
On the wider scale this was pitched as ‘the only thing you can personally do to combat climate change’ - but I suspect it is the literal strawman of a figurative progressive position, purposely pushing a manufactured defective solution as a means to distract and suppress more substantive change and organization thereof.
Individuals opting out of use doesn’t shape production or wholesale, because they’re so damned cheap to produce and the expense to dispose of them is on the public side.
Single use plastics are a classic case of Negative Externality. You can only curb them with public policies and bulk production level decisions.
The notion that “I’m doing my part” by not partaking in the fountain of free-at-point-of-service goods is predicated on an engineered misunderstanding of the plastics supply chain.
They tricked us into believing metric fucktons of single use plastics would keep us safe and healthy.
But we never had any direct control over climate policy, because we never had any direct control over the capital itself.
All we could do was blame ourselves.
Did they?
I can’t recall anyone ever being anything but nonplussed and skeptical about paper straws. From what I can tell, it was a product of a think tank that pushed into the news, which then caused businesses to treat that as though it were public demand and pushed it out to everyone, and most people shrugged, used the obviously inferior product (because it was free and the alternatives require attention), and then people got on with their day.
On the wider scale this was pitched as ‘the only thing you can personally do to combat climate change’ - but I suspect it is the literal strawman of a figurative progressive position, purposely pushing a manufactured defective solution as a means to distract and suppress more substantive change and organization thereof.
paper straws were about trash, not C02.
they used to make them with a wax coating so they would not get mushy.
I’m so confused but you guys, how is reducing the amount of single use plastics in the environment a bad thing?
Individuals opting out of use doesn’t shape production or wholesale, because they’re so damned cheap to produce and the expense to dispose of them is on the public side.
Single use plastics are a classic case of Negative Externality. You can only curb them with public policies and bulk production level decisions.
The notion that “I’m doing my part” by not partaking in the fountain of free-at-point-of-service goods is predicated on an engineered misunderstanding of the plastics supply chain.