But seriously, paper straws are a thing that I know about! We don’t make paper straws at my paper mill but we make a lot of heavily sized grades and grades with wet strength in them. Size is a papermaking chemical that, when added to paper, causes the paper to repel water. Put a drop of water on a paper towel and it will soak right in, there is a type of paper with no size in it. Put a drop of water on a dollar bill and it will not soak in but will bead up slightly and soak in after a bit. Paper straws are heavily sized, I’m sure.
Wet strength is a chemical that covalently bonds cellulose fibers to one another. In paper without wet strength, all the strength of the paper is due to hydrogen bonds between the cellulose fibers in contact with one another. Expose that paper to water and the water takes all the hydrogen bond sites and the paper loses all of its strength. Soak a piece of notebook paper in water and it pulls apart like, well, wet paper. But soak a dollar bill in paper for ten minutes (the size in money paper resists water but it will saturate after a while), and it isn’t nearly as strong (all the hydrogen bonds are gone), but it still has some strength. That strength is due to the wet strength chemical in the paper, which covalently bonds the fibers together. It’s about 15-20% as strong as it was dry. Paper straws surely have a good bit of wet strength in them, at least as much as money paper.
And what are both of those chemicals made of? You guessed it, oil. But less oil than in a straw, right? Sure, probably.
And if you throw the paper straw into a recycling bin it will get recycled, right? Well it might end up in a paper mill, sure. Although these days most residential/light commercial mix ends up in the landfill because the price is so low. But I have even more bad news. If that straw ends up in a paper mill, most of it is still going to a landfill. Because the recycled paper will get thrown into a pulper, which is a basically a giant blender. Then it will go through various cleaning stages and screens, which reject material that can not be turned into paper pulp. And probably 95% of the straw material will be rejected by this cleaning material, because the size and wet strength make this paper much more resistant to pulping compared to paper that does not contain wet strength. So it will get rejected by several screening systems and eventually get spit out into a hopper. Then that hopper goes to a landfill.
Well you should also sort by quick win vs. extremely difficult decades-long process.
It’s only a battle because right-wingers are complete morons. They’ll forget about it in a week when they adjust to life w/o plastic straws and their goldfish memories move on to the next outrage.
But American plastic doesn’t end up in the ocean anyway. It generally ends up in a landfill whether you put it in the recycling or not, which, sure, maybe isn’t great. But it doesn’t strangle baby turtles or whatever. If the US collectively gives up plastic everything it won’t have an impact on the actual oceanic plastic problem, right?
These days the plastic being shipped abroad is generally sorted and baled. Sorted and baled plastic that is shipped across the Pacific and sold to a manufacturing plant in Laos is probably not particularly likely to be thrown into the ocean, at least until it ends up being made into a bottle and consumed in a country that mismanages its plastic waste.
“Indonesia rejected dozens of shipping containers full of waste exported by wealthy nations—including the United States—after inspections revealed the containers were contaminated with plastics, diapers, used electronics, and other hazardous wastes.”.
"The vast majority—78 percent—of the U.S.'s plastic waste exports go to countries with poor waste management systems such as Malaysia, where Greenpeace documented reports of illegal dumping and burning of materials meant to be recycled. “The actual amount of U.S. plastic waste that ends in countries with poor waste management may be even higher than 78 percent,” according to the Plastic Pollution Coalition, “since countries like Canada and South Korea may reexport U.S. plastic waste.”
If this is directed at me, what I wrote isn’t based on a googled article. I work in the recycled paper industry and have spoken to a number of recyclers about the state of the scrap plastic industry. It tangentially effects the paper we receive since plastic is the largest contaminant in our own raw material. It’s true that many countries are following China’s lead in demanding higher quality, better sorted plastic. Which is obviously a good thing, although it leads to a lot of the less valuable plastic being landfilled here in the US.
Just a heads up for anyone who might not know, there are plastic bags that can go into the plastic grocery bag recycling also. The white Amazon mailers (with label cut out). Clean bread bags. Thin produce bags. Clean breakfast cereal bags. No frozen bags of any kind tho.
But that is kind of the point. I want to do more about this sort of shit before dealing with plastic straws. Some people think dealing with plastic straws will stop people from doing this
I understand people wanting to bring down big business who are mostly responsible for environmental damage but the average Jo can have an influence on these corporations. If every person, or at least the vast majority, embrace such small change as avoiding plastic straws and also do everything they can to tackle environmental issues this will lead to companies wanting to do the right thing due to the impact on profits.
One resolution that I didn’t announce this year is my commitment to continue boycotting unethical companies and really try and use my buying power for good. It can be a bit painful because who really wants to have to research everything before they decide to buy it? Having said that I do believe this is a very important process and integral to implementing any meaningful change. I use this site which is designed for Aussies but I am sure there would be something equivalent in each country.
The complaint about big companies is missing the demand part of supply and demand. If the big company is a problem, don’t buy their stuff. Everyone who buys their stuff is making it happen. Yeah, the big companies suck. Do what you can to boycott them. If you want to monkey wrench them and stop anyone else from buying their crap (either with wooden clogs, monkey wrenches or laws), great if you can get away with it, but at least stop buying it yourself.
As dumb as it seems, I 1) toss out a piece of trash off the sidewalk/parking lot/ grocery store lot every day at least once 2) try to at least 90% of the time lose a cloth bag from Yosemite we bought a decade ago every time I go to the grocery/costco etc instead of using to plastic tossables 3) bring along an empty trash bag every time we go hiking/walking (which I thank god get to start doing again) which I fill at least half full every time we go out.
Globally, it almost certainly means nothing. Locally, I like the way I feel about it. I’m good with that.
We can and are debating the value of some specific things, like what kind of bag is best for the environment, but doing what you personally can is what you can do. Expecting to have some global impact when you’re 1/7700000000th of the global population is kinda megalomaniacal.