PFAs should be illegal in all food applications by now. The danger of PFAs isn't really new at this point. I'm sure if we really try hard we'd find hundreds of viable alternatives (e.g. wax? noodle straws? bamboo?), they just wouldn't have the same margin.
I'm actually boggled that it's not illegal in things like food containers and eating utensils. I'm generally not a "trust the government to get things done" type of person but this seemed like such an obvious and easy political win considering how much air time PFAS has been getting in the last decade.
Assuming a US perspective, welcome to a world of unlimited corporate political spending (Thanks Citizens United). If you stick your head up to try to bring such a bill to the table expect your opponent next election season to come with a massive PAC-fueled war chest.
I don't understand people's obsession with straws in general. I prefer my drinks without one – the mouthfeel of a glass is so much better than a straw.
You might not be in the intersection that desires it. Some of my women friends use it to not mess up their makeup (lip stick, lip gloss) or transfer to their containers by accident. Others have sensitive teeth and can’t drink cold or ice water without it hurting, straws bypass the teeth. Boba is a particularly straw oriented beverage.
While I think it’s reasonable to actively try and reduce straw usage, I’ve found many people who would reasonably continue to use them. -shrug-
While a lot straws get used at sit down restaurants that have real glasses. I suspect far more are used at fast food restaurants/drive throughs that use plastic or styrofoam cups
We should just use fucking normal plastic straws. This is environmental priority number 1,000,000, it just appeals to people instead of vastly more impactful interventions because roughly 50% of the environmental movement is looking for minor inconveniences that they can personally endure so they get a feeling of atonement.
Or just choose not to use straws. I haven't needed to drink through a straw since I was 3 and couldn't hold a cup straight up-and-down. Who are these grown-ass adults who need to suck their drink through a straw like an uncoordinated child?
I can see if you are elderly or disabled or require extra assistance, then a straw would be essential, but for 99% of able-bodied adults? Why do restaurants even bother?
- You can place the cup on a table and continue to drink it without taking your hands off your burger, or getting salty fingers on your cup
- Tipping a drink up makes you take your eyes off what's in front of you, so it's more awkward to do while walking
- Tipping a drink up makes you take your eyes off what's in front of you, so it's more dangerous while driving. Plus it can bash the bottom of the cup into your roof or sun visor if it's down.
- My McDonald's Coke Zero tastes better through a plastic straw. I don't know the science behind it but it enters your mouth differently and I like it more than sipping from a cup or a can
You're sipping slightly ice-diluted Coke with a fresher, higher CO2 mix and specific and fresher syrup storage from the bottom of the McDonald's Coke with a straw. it's more watered down as the ice melts if you sipped from the top.
Drinking it out of the can is drinking Coke as Coke intended; however, my theory is that pouring canned over ice may dilute it, but it cools it and the CO2 evaporation rate down lower than the mixed McDonald's coke, making the McD's coke tastes bubblier and fresher. Also, McD's water filtration system versus the frozen gravy cubes you're using.
Because there is more than one cup design and I do not want to make it look like I am drinking out of a sippy cup when I am at a nice sit down restaurant.
Straws also are more sanitary because I don't want to put my lip on the edge of a cup that could be contaminated.
Drinking from a straw at a nice sitdown restaurant doesn't look any more or less mature (since that seems to be what you're getting at?) than drinking out of the modern cup meant to be used without a straw.
Cup contamination? Do you also refuse to use forks and spoons as they could be contaminated?
Forks and spoons are cleaned by a dishwasher and covered by food safety standards. Like my County has an extensive inspection program. They are also wrapped in napkins.
Drinking out of a straw (usually a black one) looks more mature than slapping a plastic top on it like at Blaze Pizza or Starbucks.
I guess whether it looks more mature is truly a cultural thing. In most of the world, straws are strongly associated with children. But maybe in your society, they're not. You may argue that the plastic top cups look like "sippy cups" that make you think of children, but they're fundamentally different items, unlike straws.
Sorry to tell you but your silverware is also touched by someone's bare hands between the time it comes out of the dishwasher and the time that you start to eat with it. It does have to get wrapped in a napkin or placed on your table somehow.
Maybe I'm sheltered but I'm baffled by all of these replies. Is this a US thing?
At least in Europe and East-Asia, it's unheard of for any nice restaurant to have straws except for kids. And it's not like women there don't wear lipstick. The image of going for a candlelight dinner and drinking from a straw is something straight out of a comedy sketch to me. I guess if it's a certain kind of cocktail, but that's the only exception. And even then the majority of cocktails won't have straws.
I truly have not been this confused by any HN thread and I've been reading this place almost daily for years.
Outside of specific cocktails, straws are not a fine dining thing in the US either. There's a reason why people are talking about things like Coke and burgers in the context of straws in drinks.
Right. Another commenter mentioned "a nice sit down restaurant", and some of the other replies imply they're just not used to not drinking without a straw at all, hence my confusion.
Now fine dining is on the extreme end, but a nice sit down restaurant to me implies something at least halfway inbetween a McDonalds and fine-dining, and at that halfway point I'd never expect straws.
This is the third thing someone is demanding people give up just so we could have a token, ineffective, anti-straw policy.
1) lipstick (and the effort put into applying it)
2) health reasons (not trusting the cup's sanitary credentials)
3) children (no idea why, but I have kids, and let me tell you: they want straws. Plus prevents spills if you tell them to leave the glass on the table)
There's quite a difference with your example than the exchange you were replying to.
(For what it's worth, I have no problem with people wanting to accessorize their bodies with lipstick. I don't see beauty in those things, but I have no problem with others seeing beauty that way. Ultimately it is a choice though, as people can also decide to be beautiful through their grace, words, actions, etc; not what some company tells them they need.)
People need water if they want to live. Somehow you managed to picked the one need which is literally the single biggest need for life as we know it to exist, making it quite the opposite of "entirely subjective".
A statement like "I think pretty paint on lips is just as important as water because everything is subjective" is not making the point you think it is.
Its almost like I picked an extreme example intentionally and then made a joke about it to illustrate it was intentional. I wrote my point you missed it.
Which did I say? "almost entirely subjective" or "entirely subjective"? Where did I write the quote "I think pretty paint on lips is just as important as water because everything is subjective"? I remember writing "context independent" tho as to indicate it's not about lipstick its about semantics of defining a need
I prefer to skip straws for most drinks except for bubble tea. Sucking up all those tapioca balls along with the tea is the whole point, otherwise it wouldn't be bubble tea.
I agree. Why should you be able to buy drinks in disposable containers at all? Just have your drink at home like a normal person. In fact, all food and beverage establishments should just be banned. Eat at home and make yourself a lunch box.
People have preferences. Some people like eating out, some people like using straws. Why are we judging people over something like this?
Also, if you drink a fizzy or bubbly drink with glasses then it fizzes onto your glasses when you drink without a straw.
Also also, drinking something other than water via a straw is better for your teeth.
Yes, also no one considered the negative externalities in terms of public sentiment. Drinking through a floppy paper straw is unpleasant and it leads to snarky comments and negative sentiment about environmentalism.
The effect is not measurable and it was a knee-jerk reaction to a viral video rather than data driven. It acts as evidence that environmentalism has become mostly political rather than scientific.
>Drinking through a floppy paper straw is unpleasant but leads to positive sentiments around environmentalism for environmentalists
Which is all you really need to know about why they did it.
The vast majority of people dispose of their trash correctly, and if you're worried about your own plastic waste ending up dumped into the Pacific via third-world recycling then doing it on-continent would result in cleaning up more than just straws.
Interesting, yeah thinking more about this it probably applies to recycling also. Separating your plastics is mostly useless as they just get shipped to third world countries where they are mostly dumped or burned.
But that act of sorting and shaming others for not doing it definitely makes a certain subset of people feel better about themselves.
Every time I end up with a soggy paper straw sticking out the top of a disposable plastic cup I contemplate the credibility of modern environmentalism politics.
I think it's the other way around. Simple, cheap and visible 'solutions' make companies look green without having to actually do anything. That it inconveniences people is just a great benefit, so they can resist future change by saying: we would like to do more, but people don't want that.
Why don't companies come out and tell the truth rather than pretend to be doing something though? Like, straws in some countries end up disproportionately in streams, etc., but not in country X, moreover, plastic straw alternatives are worse due to a, b and c.
Because they live out of lying to their customers? Doing the barely minimum and not even that, trying to get around any regulation which may benefit the customers, welcome to today's economy. I don't want to call it capitalism or socialism or whatever - because under any name, it's just a shit status we have - and we surprisingly seem willing to put up with.
There was so many priorities better to spend time on that were actually impactful before we got to “your straw may somehow circumvent the US recycling system and end up in the ocean”
This was just virtue signaling so people could feel better about themselves.
I don’t like how the article recommends stainless steel straws. Those are a great way to cause damage to your teeth/mouth, especially for kids.
Maybe we should treat straws as a wonderful accessibility product that most people shouldn’t use regularly.
If you’ve ever bought a Starbucks iced drink you know that really the only beverage the company sells that needs a straw is a Frappuccino. All those years of selling straws and all Starbucks needed to do was put a properly shaped/size hole on the lid.
People generally don't do many activities with a fork or spoon in their mouth, but walking around or driving while sipping a drink from a straw is fairly common.
Yeah, I don't regularly use straws, but when I do, I just need/"need" a straw and really hate having an inferior straw. For whatever reason, I just really hate stainless steel straws.
Not only are there much bigger priorities, but it's also ridiculous in some forms, and that creates another type of distraction from what actually matters.
For me personally I disagree with the idea that straw waste and biodegradability doesn’t matter. This overemphasis of “priorities” is a mistaken philosophy.
Reduction of straw use matters just like the same as the reduction of any type of disposable use. Anything produced with the sole purpose of being discarded is an issue.
Maybe we can make an argument that it’s a greenwashed lazy half-step to eliminate straws or provide less effective straws while still selling disposable cups, but at the same time it isn’t just one little plastic straw we are talking about here.
A company like Starbucks that has over $20 billion in revenue…divide that by five bucks as a rough average cost of a drink and assume about 1/4 of their product sales are cold drinks and you’re looking at a company that would potentially be producing multiple billions of straws every year if they hadn’t eliminated them as a default inclusion.
Imagine a billion straws in a room and how much material that would be.
The sheer scale of many of these businesses and the human population itself is why very small steps like saving a bit of plastic on the screw cap of a soft drink or replacing straws with a hole in the lid make a huge difference to consumption and waste. I personally don’t think its productive to look steps like that with too much cynicism.
On top of that the corporation gets to enjoy the cost savings so it’s really a win-win. Obviously companies shouldn’t pat themselves on the back and consider the job done but I don’t think the world becomes a better place if Starbucks hypothetically added straws back to the waste stream.
Yeah I remember going to a Booster Juice (Canadian smoothie chain) after they banned plastic straws here, and saw they were proudly advertising their biodegradable straws, and upon trying one I was perfectly satisfied with it compared to a normal plastic one. I figured maybe it's not standard because they're expensive enough that it could only be justified when selling a $10 drink.
Then the last time I went they had moved onto paper straws like everyone else.
Stainless Steel Straw
- Mass: 15g
- Energy: 900 KJ per straw (60GJ per ton of stainless)
- Composition:
18% Chromium (Cr)
8% Nickel (Ni)
74% Iron (Fe)
- Note: High chromium content, which can be hazardous
Do not buy anything that requires a straw because the disposable cup you buy is very likely either made of plastic or is lined with bisphenols such as BPA. BPA exposure during pregnancy is even associated with causing permanent neurodevelopmental damage and autism.
Reposting this as a top-level comment because I'd really like to be enlightened.
I truly have not been this confused by the comments on any HN post before and I've been reading this place almost daily for years. Is it completely the default to drink from a straw in the US?
Let's say you're at a business lunch. People drink from straws? I just can't picture it. Or is it because people only order water or alcoholic drinks at such lunches?
Do "fancy" places never serve any carbonated drinks whatsoever? Including something like "artisanal kombucha" or whatever they can ask a premium for? If they do, then are those always served with straws?
I'm seeing reasons like hygiene, lipstick and so on. But I know that even in the US, plenty of people drink wine, and they definitely don't do so with a straw. And places serving wine must have a decent overlap with women wearing lipstick, statistically.
Yeah I think it's a US thing. It's surprising how vehement people are in the comments when you suggest they could drink without a straw.
I was thinking back, I just went on a 2 week vacation in NZ and was eating out a lot. I ordered soda a couple of times and was never given a straw. The kids did get straws a few times with juice drinks.
It's a cultural/learned thing but people don't realize that so they get cross about it, one way or the other.
I would really love to see a breakdown on how paper straws came to be. It seems that overnight after that Turtle video a lot of laws were passed, and paper straws (which I had never seen before) were flowing out of every place that sold drinks.
It smells like a premeditated astroturf-driven regulatory capture campaign.
Maybe I haven't used ones like you have or perhaps I drink my drink fairly quickly compared to others, but I haven't really had this problem with paper straws in my area (they seem to be coated in wax). Certainly the portion in the drink can start to be soggy... but I'm the type of guy that isn't really interested in the drink after the ice starts to significantly melt.
I'm not an anti-straw crusader but I think this is a bit of a bad faith argument.
People with various disabilities or age related also frequently require lots of other assistive devices but that doesn't imply that they need to be used as the default for every single consumer. My grocery store doesn't hand every shopper a wheelchair instead of a shopping cart just because some percentage of the population requires them.
But they are not the default, and that's OP and OOOP's point. There's no reason 99% of the population needs to be served their drinks with a straw. Straws should be available for the 1% who need them for accessibility reasons and some (probably very small) group who prefer to use them for whatever reason. But they should not be the default.
> My grocery store doesn't hand every shopper a wheelchair instead of a shopping cart just because some percentage of the population requires them.
Strange choice of example. Electric wheelchairs are available at most stores of a certain size. Wheelchair reserved parking is available at all almost all stores.
I still don't think you're following what I'm saying.
When you go to the grocery store, what is the DEFAULT option available to you? Is there a corral of hundreds of wheelchairs with one waiting for every shopper?
Just because something should be available does not mean it should be the default.
A more robust reusable plastic straw would be more acceptable than single use disposable plastic straws for people who require them. IMO paper, wax coated or not, is acceptable for a disposable scenario.
There are also your steel/aluminum/titanium, glass alternatives, I find those potentially dangerous (i don't want to stab the roof of my mouth or crack my teeth against a metal straw and i don't want a glass straw breaking off in my mouth).
Perhaps someone else will come up with an even better alternative (a stiff silicone?)
I don't think anyone is saying that we should ban 100% of all straws which are made of plastics, they are more concerned with decreasing the amount of 'single-use disposable' straws made of plastics.
I didn't know what a summer cocktail was, so I looked up a video of someone drinking one. The first one I found was a guy making four different kinds. He drinks them with no straw. But maybe that's weird. Maybe there's something special about a summer cocktail that just totally requires a straw, except for this one weird guy. Maybe I've had a summer cocktail in my life, I don't know, but it would certainly account for less than one in a thousand drinks I've had.
So anyway, I'm not really opposed to straws. If you need one for your fancy drink, or your designer mustache, go ahead. But also most straw usage seems unnecessary to me. Pulling out these edge cases seems like what-about-ism.
Hell, no. All it takes is one trip on something walking out of the coffee shop, using a straw because of sensitive teeth, and I’m possibly dead or paralyzed.
Paralyzed because of a stainless steel straw - all it takes is one time and the public will correctly reject the concept forever.
I’m really not seeing it. A rod of any kind in the mouth is very dangerous - as can be seen by the thousands of toothbrush injuries every year.
Glass, unless it’s a wine glass, most likely just gives you a bunch of cuts. Might need surgery, but better than paralysis!
Steel straws aren’t an option. All it takes is one kid getting a steel rod through their face, a $10 million ad campaign, and giving your child one will be likened to child abuse. This is easily foreseeable.
Five Guys already sell them in the UK at their counters. You get a cardboard box, a stainless steel straw, and ... a steel & plastic brush to clean your straw. I wish I was kidding.
I bought some since I couldn't find any plastic ones and these definitely didn't come with anything like that. If I were to fall with one of these straws it would be like falling onto a fork.
