So maybe if you make the cost high enough (which is currently just externalized) then they might start disappearing by not being produced in the first place by lack of demand.
People don't buy this because it's crap. They buy it because it's cheap.
2. Importers of cheap plastic crap are not on the hook of the eventual disposal. So the cost isn’t seen by the consumer at point of purchase but instead indirectly seen in increased taxes for garbage disposal
As far as i know a large portion of what i described shutdown after it came to light, although i would not be the least bit surprised if it was still happening in some capacity, or even in full under the disguise of something else
> You need to 2x+ the transportation cost of all products
As with all economics, it's not a one-way street. A change in conditions causes a change in behavior. Increased costs will cause a change in how products are designed, manufactured, used. If one-time use cost goes through the roof, suddenly all vapes will be multi-use. Plastic bottles will disappear in favor of dispensers and multi-use bottles. Not all of them, but most of.
It's about incentives in a dynamic system, not spot bans in an otherwise static world.
Nowadays the homeless or other less-than-living-wage earners do that for us. You can see them everywhere in cities all over north america and europe if you pay attention.
As European that is not spread everywhere, while you can get some money back in Germany and Greece, there is none to be had in Portugal.
In Germany, it is such a big issue with people not having other source of income, that there is a culture where and how to leave the bottles around so that they are easier to collect.
"Why stop there" is often a reason why nothing gets done. Why do small if you can go big right away? Because going big right away is costly (in social cost, in convincing, in how much people need to change behavior, ...) and that prevents people from doing it in the first place because the threshold is high. Apathy is the result. Better to take a small step first, then get used to the measure / the cost, then have a next phase where you do more.
Everybody makes fun of paper straws. Or they made fun of wind power when it was barely 0.1% of energy production. Why not immediately demand 20 years ago that all single use plastic is banned? Or that only wind and solar are allowed? Because the step is too big, it would not be accepted. You need to take one step at a time.
That's even a viable strategy against procrastination. There is this big daunting task. So much to do! Oh my, better scroll a little tiktok first. No, just take a small first step of the task. Very small, no big commitment. Then maybe do some tiktok, but the little first step won't be too much. Result is, you have an immediate sense of accomplishment and actually made progress, maybe even stay hooked with more steps of the ultimately big task.
Yeah, because they suck. Uh, pun not intended. Paper straws get somewhat soggy and feel bad in your mouth. They are inferior to the plastic straws they purport to replace, so people resist them as much as they can.
If you want to actually make a difference with an environmental effort, you need to make something superior. Nobody makes fun of LED light bulbs because (up front cost aside) they are wildly superior to incandescent. People actually like having LED bulbs and seek them out. The same cannot be said, and likely never will be said, of paper straws.
Most paper straws use PFAS, meaning we’re actively composting PFAS in a fantasy effort to feel good about our waste without actually giving anything up
paper straws do not make any sense any way you look at it. Are we saying that we are okay to cut trees to make straws when we could make them out of petroleum ?
Moreover, paper straws are not even recyclable due to water content which makes them soggy. Plastic ones are almost 100% recyclable
Most importantly, unlike plastic straws, they are laced with glue and other chemicals which gets ingested.
Nope, that's a myth. Plastic is essentially unrecyclable. Some types of plastic can be made into "lower" quality types with lots of effort, but there is no circular reuse. The oil and plastic industries want to make you believe that this is all a solved problem, but it very much is not.
In contrast, paper and wood products just rot away at the end of their life, and a new tree grows in their place.
It's not a myth, you can make new items using recycled plastics. Of course, the recycled plastic doesn't have the same properties, but it doesn't mean that it can't be useful to reduce plastic production. Most plastic items do not require pristine materials anyway.
It's the same for paper and cardboard, and it's much better to reuse it as much as possible to avoid cutting a tree. Letting it rot releases the same amount of CO2 than burning it, by the way.
The vast majority of paper products made from farmed trees (because if you're pulping it anyway you can use really fast growing wood), meaning the CO2 you release from burning/composting paper straws is offset by the next tree planted to replace it.
Excess CO2 in the atmosphere is driven by burning fuels that aren't being actively produced via recaptured atmospheric CO2, such as petroleum.
And the fundamental issue with recycling plastic is that the raw ingredients for virgin plastic are basically free as a byproduct of fuel petroleum extraction. If I want octane, hexane, methane, propane, etc. for fuel, I'm also going to be pulling up and separating out ethane, which is a very quick steam crack and catalyzed polymerization away from polyethylene.
I'd argue it's kinda a myth, because I used to believe we could create a perfectly closed loop (you know, like the one the recycling symbol suggests) if only we could cleanly separate the materials (which in my imagination requires consumers to vigilantly separate the waste into dozens of different bins). I'm beginning to think I was wrong.
If 1kg of "recycled" plastics allow to reduce the production of 1kg of pristine plastics, it's already a big win, even if it's downcycling. No need to throw away the baby with the bathwater.
It is probably the only argument in favor of recycling.
After the last six months exploring the recycling process what I get is this:
Reduce, reuse, recycle.
The order matter, recycling is useful but should be the last step when something has to be trashed away. In the case of our straws, buying a metal one would reduce and reuse much better than the two others solutions.
A problem is that we tend to only talk about recycling while forgetting the two others. It is easy to talk about how many tons has been recycled while it's very difficult to quantify the reduce reuse practice and not very appealing for sellers either.
> Are we saying that we are okay to cut trees to make straws when we could make them out of petroleum ?
It’s more okay to make things out of paper than plastic, yes. Plastic waste and microplastics are a huge problem. Trees are a renewable resource.
> Moreover, paper straws are not even recyclable due to water content which makes them soggy. Plastic ones are almost 100% recyclable
Plastic straws are almost never (literally never?) recycled. Paper straws are supposed to be fully biodegradable.
> Most importantly, unlike plastic straws, they are laced with glue and other chemicals which gets ingested.
But yes, this and the usability issue make the other points moot (n.b. leaching harmful chemicals is a concern that also applies to plastic straws and paper cups). The vast majority of existing straws should be replaced with no straw, and most beyond that with reusable straws.
Isn't this a bit like "paper" cups for coffee / water? We switched to these at work a few years ago, and it's an all-round horrible experience.
I swear every other one leaks right away, and those that don't can only be refilled once or twice before they do. So you end up going through like 10 of those a day. I also don't know how "eco-friendly" they actually are, since there's a picture of a dead turtle on them under a text to the effect of "don't throw out in nature".
I guess on the plus-side, our company at least provides ceramic cups to their internal employees. But since it's the employees' responsibility to clean them, not everybody is off the disposable cup train.
My company told everyone to bring their own mug, which they were expected to wash from time to time. Then they give mugs for "thanks for working here" awards once in a while so they can be sure everyone has one. Soap and a sink are provided near the coffee makers.
Paper cups are still provided, but it is intended visitors not people who work in the building.
> I swear every other one leaks right away, and those that don't can only be refilled once or twice before they do. So you end up going through like 10 of those a day
Yeah, if you're using that many, the solution is, and always has been, to get a proper reusable cup (ceramic, glass, whatever).
Right, but this just shows why these policies don't work in practice. People will just use 10 paper cups which are free, rather than cart around a big ceramic one.
Especially in situations where people don't even have an assigned spot in the office anymore, it's not exactly shocking that many will choose the easier route.
> Are we saying that we are okay to cut trees to make straws when we could make them out of petroleum ?
Uhh.. yes? Trees can be grown, just like any agriculture product.
> Plastic ones are almost 100% recyclable
In theory. However that rarely works out in practice, due to the complications of mixing various types of plastic in a single stream of garbage.
> Most importantly, unlike plastic straws, they are laced with glue and other chemicals which gets ingested.
The glue for paper straws will be a biodegradable water-based adhesive. It may be finished with natural wax. And that's it. I think you are intentionally spreading FUD saying glue and chemicals.
That being said, I hate paper straws. I like bamboo straws though.
Maybe. Safe of ingestion means we have to know what happens in the body. Some plastics just pass right through and are safe; some biodegradable things are good food for the body. Some biodegradable things degrade to something harmful, and some plastics do get absored into the body and are harmful.
But usually paper and cardboard that has been in contact with food is not recyclable because it contaminates the batch. That's why pizza boxes also cannot go into the cardboard/paper fraction.
The point of paper fast food boxes is not to recycle them but to have no trash in the end as they just burn or rot, all in a sustainable way. In contrast to plastic.
The frequencies that they claim affect them are disputable but the flickering in some cheap LED lights is real. Badly/cheaply designed electronics can have flicker as bad as 50 Hz if they use half bridge diode rectification only (e.g. that time I was passing through Geneva airport and the Christmas lights flickered in my peripheral vision)
No it's to punish us when it isn't us causing the alleged plastic problem. When the orders went out all the western media took holidays to the far east to film garbage filled rivers in india, the philippines, indonesia. Your disposable plastic straw wasn't ending up there. Your plastic bottle might have been but that's only because of the recycling scam. It should have been burned like the oil it is.
Good that they suck, people might realize that they may as well refuse the straw, drink from the glass and that their life is exactly as comfortable as before the ban.
I don't understand the moaning and bellyaching about straws. Are people that bad at drinking from cups? If you aren't a toddler or bed-ridden patient in a hospital (EDIT: or anyone else with physical conditions that necessitate a straw) you should be able to drink without a straw.
Mouth cancer. I can live a normal life EXCEPT I can't allow liquids to touch my lips. Without straws I have to go through agony just to be minimally hydrated. Paper straws get stuck to my necrotic flesh and tear it off.
There are a variety of conditions that straws are helpful for. A lot of people have health issues that make it difficult to swallow. A lot of people have mouth and lip conditions.
What I don't understand is all the moaning and groaning about the smallest piece of plastic that helps a LOT of disabled people have a semblance of normalcy, when here are much larger plastic fish to fry. We use plastic for basically everything but people have tunnel visioned on a minor piece that actually helps people. It's myopic.
I thought "bed-ridden patient" covered everyone who is physically unable to drink without straws due to disabilities or other conditions. I guess that wasn't clear enough though. My apologies. I've edited my comment now.
> What I don't understand is all the moaning and groaning about the smallest piece of plastic that helps a LOT of disabled people have a semblance of normalcy
You have to admit it's been turned into a culture war point by people who mostly don't need straws. They just need boogeymen to rile up people against environmentalism in general.
You're missing the fact that this sort of infrastructure requires a robust business case. That's why scale is critical.
Recycling bottles and cans has a solid business case. Glass and aluminium are straight forward to recycle at an industrial scale, but would be pointless if they were kept at an artisanal scale.
Any moralistic argument is pointless if you can't put together a coherent business plan. The people you need to work and the energy you need to spend to gather and process whatever you want to process needs to come from somewhere. How many vape pens do you need to recycle per month to support employing a single person? Guilt trips from random people online don't pay that person's rent, do they?
> Everybody makes fun of paper straws.
This is specious reasoning. The core issue are tradeoffs, and what you have to tolerate or abdicate. Paper straws are a red herring because the main criticism was that, at the start, they failed to work as straws. So you were left with an industrial demand to produce a product that failed to work and was still disposable.
If you look at food packaging and containers, you are faced with more thought-provoking tradeoffs. Paper containers don't help preserve food as well as plastic ones. Packaging deteriorates if exposed to any form of moisture, and contaminates food so quickly tk the point you can taste cardboard if you leave them overnight. This leads to shorter shelf life and more food waste. Is food waste not an ecological problem? How do you manage those tradeoffs?
In theory plastic food 'waste' could be far more recyclable if it were standardized on plastics that were recyclable and we had a deposit system.
Needless to say the food and drink industry has spent an epic fuckton on lobbying to ensure that doesn't happen. Remember to give a proper fuck you to the Coca-cola corp about this.
I agree with the "don't break the web" design principle, but I sometimes disagree with precisely where TC39 draws the line. There is obviously a cost to breaking old, unchanging websites. But there's also a cost to allowing old, unchanging websites to hold the entire web hostage. Balancing those costs is a subjective matter.
As far as I know, TC39 doesn't have any clear guidelines about how many websites or how many users must be affected in order to reject a proposed change to JavaScript behavior. Clearly there are breaking changes that are so insignificant that TC39 should ignore them (imagine a website with some JavaScript that simply iterates over every built-in API and crashes if any of them ever change).
The decided not to have it there because they didn't like the idea of maintaining version 4.0 forever in their engines.
That's basically why they never did anything like "use strict" again.
IMO, that's a bad choice. Giving yourself the ability to have new behavior and features based on a version is pretty natural and how most programming languages evolve. Having perpetual backwards and fowards compatibility at all times is both hard to maintain and makes it really hard to fix old mistakes.
The only other reason they might have chosen this route is because it's pretty hard to integrate the notion of compatibility levels into minifiers.
Nah, that's not a "sacrifice", but the only sane way. In the ideal case, clearly document the constructor with a warning that it's not ISO conformant and offer a ISO conformant alternative.
In my (unfortunate) experience, DateTime/Timezone handling is one of the things most prone to introduce sneaky, but far-reaching bugs as it is. Introducing such a behaviour change that (usually) won't fail-fast, will often seemingly continue working as before until it doesn't and is deceptively tricky to debug/pinpoint/fix ist just asking for a fast lane into chaos.
And even with JS going the extra mile on backwards compatibility, I don't think most other languages would introduce that kind of breaking change in that way either.
Have an optional parameter to opt in to the old behaviour and keep the new correct behaviour the default (without the parameter) seems like a decent choice.
To preserve backwards compatibility and not require all those old sites to update, the legacy behavior would have to be the default, with opt-in for the new behavior.
That is the opposite approach. Also an option. One could also deprecate the call without parameter and force always a parameter with which behaviour. The deprecation could last enough time that those websites would have been rewritten multiple times ;)
The control interface burned into your hardware device will not have been rewritten. And it's not like you can have a flag day where everyone switches over, so the lifespan of those hardware devices isn't that relevant.
Backwards compatibility is a large part of the point of the Web.
You could version everything at whatever granularity you like, but over time that accumulates ("bug 3718938: JS gen24 code incorrectly handles Date math as if it were gen25-34", not to mention libraries that handle some versions but not others and then implicitly pass their expectations around via the objects they create so your dependency resolver has to look at the cross product of versions from all your depencies...)
There is no free lunch. A deprecation warning lasting a decade before erroring will break less that some css boxing models and strict mode in many browsers.
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