[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

[afiori]

isn't the problem with plastics that once they are underwater or otherwise out of strong sunlight they take forever to degrade or break?

In a different context it is what happens with dioxins IIRC.