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.
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?”
Yes, but this is both a global problem and a local one. Not all plastic waste travels long distances, and certainly isn't a global problem in the Mediterranean or Baltic. It is still worth Europe limiting plastic waste, even if no-one else does anything.
In the end, for the open oceans, it requires everyone to act. This is not sufficient, but it's still a good start.
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!
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.
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.
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.
I've been using disposable paper-stem cotton buds for a while, for the simple reason that they are flushable (or so it says on the box; some people disagree). Glad to see plastic ones on their way out given the superior alternatives.
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.
