
EU Proposes to Ban Plastic Straws, Stirs, and Cotton Buds - vincvinc
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/05/28/world/europe/ap-eu-europe-plastics-.html
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detaro
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17172584](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17172584)

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drak0n1c
Over 90% of ocean plastic waste is from 2 rivers in Africa and 8 rivers in
Asia. This is an infrastructure/development problem, banning plastic items in
the developed world is myopic.

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/nov/05/terrawatch-t...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/nov/05/terrawatch-
the-rivers-taking-plastic-to-the-oceans)

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stingraycharles
I’ve been so annoyed with all these show politics and people buying into it
since forever. It’s as if no one ever asked themselves, “but wait a minute,
when I throw plastic away in the garbage, how would it end up contributing to
the plastic soup?”

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Hermel
The justification is complete nonsense. The claimed goal is to reduce the
amount of plastic that ends up in the ocean. But I fail to see how the straw
used to drink a cold chocolate in a restaurant in Vienna could ever end up in
the ocean. So the basic premise does not seem to be very well-reasoned. Maybe
I'm cynical, but I cannot get rid of the suspicion that this law is mainly
about virtue signalling. It seems to be designed to maximize PR impact: they
chose a topic that everyone agrees with (saving the environment), that
everyone understands, and that does no serious harm to any politically
powerful entity. Well done, micro-managing overlords of the European
Commission!

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scrollaway
Just because your properly-disposed straw in Vienna won't end up in the ocean
doesn't mean the bill doesn't accomplish its goal of reducing ocean waste. It
just means the bill has wider-reaching impact than its stated goal.

If that wider-reaching impact is, more generally, to reduce plastic waste as a
whole... then I'd say this is great.

Given the amount of people who think like you, though, I'm quite glad the EC
is micromanaging. Reason is hard to come by.

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Hermel
The problem is that by micromanaging, the commission violates the principle of
subsidiarity. This is not the first time and I generally don’t have much trust
in anyone who disregards his own stated principles whenever convenient.

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ggreer
I never understood outright bans on stuff like this. Why not tax these
products enough to price-in their externalities?

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innocentoldguy
I'm all for eliminating plastic cotton buds. They're too flimsy to really do
anything of value anyway. The rolled-paper stemmed cotton buds are by far the
superior product, and better for the environment, apparently. Better yet are
Japanese bamboo ear picks. If you really want to scratch your brain from ear
to ear, those are the way to do it.

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jacob019
What are cotton buds?

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10dpd
Sigh. Its quite depressing to see Americans rely on brand names rather than
the original meaning of the word.

It would almost make you want to take an Advil.

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vatueil
It's mostly regional variation rather than brand names. American English
almost always uses "cotton swab" as the generic term while British English
today uses "cotton bud" more often. Overall "cotton swab" appears to be the
most common English term.

Given that "cotton bud" appears to be a relatively recent British quirk
(gaining popularity in the last couple decades), I would submit that "cotton
swab" is the original and proper generic term.

British English:
[https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cotton+swab%2C...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cotton+swab%2Ccotton+bud&year_start=1800&corpus=18)

American English:
[https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cotton+swab%2C...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cotton+swab%2Ccotton+bud&year_start=1800&corpus=17)

English overall:
[https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cotton+swab%2C...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=cotton+swab%2Ccotton+bud&year_start=1800&corpus=15)

(Refresh the page if the graph doesn't load at first.)

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10dpd
I was referring to the use of the brand name 'Q Tip'.

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lastUsername
We need to eliminate all the single use plastic objects. This is a good first
step.

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mc32
Plastic chopsticks and disposable plastic lunch boxes.

