[kragen]

i think the bigger issue is probably that the paper straws are about an order of magnitude higher in mass, virtually 100% organic chemicals, and so represent about an order of magnitude higher resource consumption

the bigger issue than that is that disposable straws, even after that order-of-magnitude increase in impact, are an absolutely insignificant issue in ecological terms and yet have somehow become a political issue and spawned new laws and ridiculous greenwashing marketing

[audunw]

To me it doesn’t seem that paper straws is about the resource consumption or oil used or anything like that. I think you have completely misunderstood the purpose.

Even with the order of magnitude increase in resources used it’s still insignificant, as you touch on.

What’s not insignificant is that in the contexts where straws are used.. fast food and coffee shops and such, they’re all too likely to be just thrown out into nature rather than being properly disposed of.

Any material in that category needs to be biodegradable. That’s just a hard requirement in my opinion. So plastics is just not a suitable material.

Yes, there are other sources of plastic pollution that are much worse in volume. Though they tend to end up in other places. We need to work on all the sources of plastic pollution in parallel.

(Unless we go the other route and do massive bioengineering of microorganisms to let them break down plastics)

[kragen]

from my point of view, it depends on how much of it there is and what effect it has on the environment

sand, glass, metal, and rust aren't biodegradable either, but i don't think we should ban mountains because they throw sand out into nature when they erode

plastic straws are generally polypropylene, which is photodegradable to relatively nontoxic materials

[dddssddd]

Didn't realize Mountains were pollution until you pointed it out. Thanks for your meaningful and on discussion contribution!

[kragen]

you seem to have interpreted my comment as saying the opposite of what it did in fact say, presumably for humorous effect

[marcus0x62]

Dude drank through too many PFAS-enhanced paper straws and now has reading comprehension problems :(

[chmod600]

Plastic straws strewn in a natural setting feels a lot worse than sand. I can't tell you exactly why, but I still think that "don't throw plastic around" is a good starting place for a discussion and I don't think it's productive to argue that point.

[kragen]

maybe what feels good or bad to people in a natural setting is not actually a useful measurement of what affects the well-being of nature

maybe the actual health of the motherfucking ecosystem matters more than what looks nice on a postcard

common sense is what tells you the world is flat, chemotherapy is bad for you, and lead paint and sassafras are good to eat

[yyyk]

Glass is biodegradable. Metal is so easily recycled.

I'll note though that biodegradability is not the only consideration, and there are other important advantages to plastic straws.

[afiori]

How is glass biodegradable? isn't it basically rock?

I don't think that "can be eroded to sand" counts as biodegradable

[yyyk]

Hmm..

Reading about this, you're right definition-wise (Glass is not biodegradable), but in practice Glass is degradable to safe materials - and this happens naturally - which is what we really want.

[kragen]

so is polypropylene; by this measure polypropylene is just as good as glass

[ricardobeat]

Sources needed. This study says paper straws uses slightly less energy and emits about the same CO2 as a plastic one: https://www.appropedia.org/HSU_straw_analysis#:~:text=A%20si....

Even if that’s not the case, “resource usage” is not the right metric to optimize for, this cost-focused mentality is exactly how we ended up with plastic [literally] everywhere.

Hundreds of billions of plastic straws are thrown away every year, this is a massive problem even if its only a few % of the total.

[kragen]

probably it's good to have plastic everywhere if it decreases environmental damage

the hsu analysis is wrong because it's omitting the energy consumed by growing the trees; it rates "craft paper" as 12.6 kJ/g, but according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#In_chemical_rea... burning wood produces 18 MJ/kg = 18 kJ/g, which is to say, more energy than that is still available in the end product, without even taking into account the "embodied" energy dissipated in processing

the energy consumed by the tree in growing is about 20× larger than this, 300–400 kJ per gram of wood, which is close to 700 kJ per gram of paper, because about half the tree is lignin, which is digested in the papermaking process and then discharged into waterways

it does give a reasonably plausible (if misleadingly precise) figure of 95.4 kJ/g for the polypropylene straws

also, it incorrectly compares 200-mg polypropylene straws against 200-mg paper straws. but paper straws are, as everyone knows, enormously thicker than polypropylene straws of the same level of durability; even with the accounting error of omitting the embodied energy of the paper, its conclusion presupposes the opposite of my premise above, which you should have mentioned in your comment (but presumably could not because you had not actually read the study you were citing)

in fact, a typical 6-mm-diameter paper straw made from 330 gsm paper at a length of 200 mm weighs some 1250 mg, roughly 6× as much as the hsu study's 200-mg estimate. a 200-mg paper straw would be 53 gsm; that's like tracing paper. it would collapse immediately if you tried to suck on it

finally, it is not correct that hundreds of billions of plastic straws are thrown away per year, and those that end up in landfills (which is the vast majority) are not a problem at all. nor are they a few % of the total, as you say, but 100× less than that; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_straw#Environmental_i... says, 'In total, they are less than 0.022% of plastic waste emitted to oceans.'

[ricardobeat]

I’m not surprised you replied in less time than it takes to read the first paragraph. The study is about embedded energy, so yes one assumes it does account for energy used growing trees (remember the solar energy they use is free), unless you have evidence to the contrary?

I can’t even start understanding that logic. The whole reason we’re having this discussion is that we know the environment, especially marine life, is being ravaged by plastic waste.

[kragen]

i have added my calculations to the contrary to the comment above, perhaps after you wrote your comment, so you can see that i had somehow come to the correct conclusions before reading the first paragraph

consider the possibility that this is because i have previous knowledge of the area instead of just pasting the first link google throws at me, so my opinions are based on domain knowledge instead of the kind of common sense that tells you the world is flat

if solar energy is free then why do we care about embodied energy

we do not know that the environment, especially marine life, is being 'ravaged' by plastic waste. it is being ravaged by clear-cutting (including for papermaking), by industrial waste effluents (including from papermaking), by agricultural waste effluents, by global warming, by ocean acidification, by habitat destruction from farming (including tree farming), by overfishing, by desertification, and by dumping of toxic waste

there is clearly a problem with plastic waste due to poor waste disposal practices in a few countries (mostly indonesia and the philippines) but in the overall scheme of environmental devastation, it is comparatively small, and plastic straws are an utterly insignificant part of that comparatively small problem

[ricardobeat]

The Wikipedia article you linked to says a marketing firm estimated daily usage of plastic straws in the US at 390M, not much lower than the kid's estimate. The estimate for Europe is 25 billion/year, according to other sources that are also not a 9-year old.

Why are you surprised solar energy is free? We're talking about trees. It's not accounting for the energy consumed in the creation of crude oil either, I'm sure you already know that "embedded energy" refers to extraction + transportation + manufacture, not the mass of the materials.

Straws are especially harmful to animals as it already comes in an easily 'consumable' size, even before it starts degrading. They are nearly always single-use and thrown away at a rate higher than any other plastic product. Research keeps popping up pointing to plastic as a contributor to the death of coral reefs, damage to sea life, and we have no idea about the actual impact of microplastics now found embedded in the tissues of every living being.

I still cannot understand what type of argument you're trying to make. Having plastic everywhere is obviously not good for the environment even if paper ones take more resources. Paper is renewable and biodegradable, oil/plastic is not, and we still have several orders of magnitude more energy available.