I use these for some purposes, and buy plastic bags to line the trash can we empty the litter box into. I have also bought reusable nylon bags to replace their use as handy bags to stow in a backpack. Unfortunately, i tend to lose the nice nylon bags, so i still kinda miss the ones merchants used to give out.
I mostly use straws for drinks with milk in them. Coffee (i want a very thin straw, to help cool the drink) or milkshakes (i want a thick straw). And for colonoscopy prep (i want a thick straw, to carry as much as possible past my tongue, where i can quickly swallow in the back of my mouth.) I don’t want to reuse straws for any of these. Also, i think the issue with straws isn’t “wasting resources”, i think it’s that there have been sad photos published of sea turtles with straws stuck up their noses. I think so long as you dispose of a plastic straw properly, so it ends up in a landfill, and not loose at sea, they aren’t a big deal. They are small, and hard to clean, and i suspect you use more resources trying to clean them than just using a new one.
Yes, just as with plastic bags, it’s once again a case of irresponsible morons making it hard for the rest of us.
As for disposing of plastic straws, I’ve tended to think that even better than landfill would be recycling them. I’ve not thrown them in the garbage (which is where I put the paper ones after scrunching them up) because of the possibility that they might poke through the plastic garbage bags. So I’ve typically stuffed them into a plastic container, like a plastic Coke bottle (of which I have zillions) in the hope that they just get melted into recycled plastic.
One challenge is… what do you think happens to the plastic straw when it’s put in a landfill? It may not end up in a turtle’s nose, which is good, but it does not just disappear. I have read estimates that a plastic beverage bottle made today will still be intact in the year 2465. Plastics now form a geological layer, which could be used by alien paleontologists millenia from now to date when humans existed on earth.
So it stays there forever, and becomes, essentially, a new kind of rock. Who cares?
I actually don’t think that will happen. It’s mostly carbon, and carbon is food. I’d there aren’t bacteria that eat plastic in landfills now, i expect there will be. But a properly constructed landfill is harmless.
That’s actually a really bad idea. Unless the straw is the same kind of plastic as the bottle, you are contaminating the bottle, and it can no longer be recycled.
You’re quite correct – in theory. In practice, however, I suspect that the plastic in the bottle cap, the plastic in the label around the bottle, and the plastic in my straw are all relatively insignificant contaminants that all get thrown into the same melted mush.
My town recycling and disposal center is quite successful at saving the town money by selling a lot of the waste stream to recyclers. They can do this in part because the town facility is really strict about keeping different things separate, so their materials are clean and can be recycled at a profit. It has a large sign when you enter that says, “when in doubt, throw it out”.
I personally don’t count on a “properly constructed landfill” to be in great condition for centuries. And I don’t think hoping for new bacteria to eat plastic is a great solution either.
That’s why it’s a feature that plastic straws are likely to remain in place in a landfill for hundreds of years.
Anyway, if you are worried about plastic debris in the ocean, there are bigger fish to fry than straws. My understanding is that a lot of microplastics enter the ocean when lint gets rinsed off plastic fibers in the laundry. And a lot of the macro plastics get there from litter. The tonnage of plastic debris that gets into the ocean from plastic straws that are bagged and sent to landfill is insignificant.
(They are a significant litter hazard, but I’m careful about that.)
the plastic will remain for hundreds of years. I am not confident it will remain in a landfill for that long. Shit happens over centuries.
The best solution is to not let single use plastics end up in landfills at all, by virtue of not making them in the first place.
I prefer to fry all the fish. Big ones and little ones. Much of the microplastics is from plastic pellets that are spilled into the ocean. Pellets that are shipped around in order to make single use plastics. Like straws.
If you are scrupulously avoiding polyester and nylon fabrics, all plastic food and beverage packaging, along with plastic bags, gadgets sold in plastic “bubbles”, etc., Then great, fry all the fish.
I try to reduce my use of plastic. I also use plastic straws and plastic bags for the things they excel at. I’m pretty sure i bring home less plastic than the average American, even so.
Fair, but i hate the idea that any tiny thing, no matter the cost, must be worth doing. And my use of plastic straws is a tiny thing.
And I’m pretty sure the environmental cost of actually cleaning straws to the point where I’d be willing to reuse them is greater than the environmental cost of the straws. So to me, “don’t use plastic straws” means “don’t use straws”. And that’s hardly the end of the world, but there are times when using a straw makes me happy. Or makes a colonoscopy a lot less miserable.
I am trying to avoid plastic fabrics, however. I gather they can be a serious problem for the ocean.
Mylar and latex, too; many people are allergic to the latter.
I recently came home to find a partial wreath of half-deflated blue balloons resting against my steps. Most likely, someone in the neighborhood had a baby shower, and a gust of wind caught it. I took it in and threw it away.
But when you say “I prefer to fry all the fish. Big ones and little ones. Much of the microplastics is from plastic pellets that are spilled into the ocean.” you appear to be making precisely that argument. If the major objection to plastic straws is simply that they’re made of plastic, and that pre-production plastic pellets contribute to ocean microplastic pollution, then one should recognize that the volume of plastic involved is so tiny that the impact is negligible.
When contemplating a ban on plastic bags and plastic straws and all such environmental initiatives, there should be a rational cost/benefit assessment, where “cost” includes not just monetary cost but inconvenience and impact on quality of life in exchange for what may be minimal benefits or even negative benefits because of unintended consequences. It’s not productive when well-intentioned environmental groups demonize the most visible targets instead of more important ones. For example, the lack of proper recycling practices and facilities in many communities is responsible for far more environmental damage than all the plastic straws that have ever been consumed by all of humanity.
If the plastic stays in the landfill, who cares? The planet has orders of magnitude more room for landfill than we need. The challenge is of course ensuring your landfill doesn’t leech gross crap into the water supply or something.