Cartoon of the Day

You'll Need To Re-Use That Cotton Shopping Bag 7,100 Times For It To Make Environmental Sense

By Hank Campbell — August 6, 2018 @ American Council on Science and Health

Companies left and right are banning plastic straws because ocean critters are important - with no evidence getting rid of plastic straws is really helping marine critters at all. While I shake my head at that, I am not surprised. The free market has spoken, companies respond to what consumers think they want. When activists and endocrine disruption magicians claimed BPA might be doing... something... the science community knew that if a chemical binds to estrogen 1/20,000th as well as actual estrogen, it is not doing anything, it is just a harmless trace chemical, but I was not surprised ConAgra took it out of their cans. The public were told they wanted that. The market responded and the cost was passed along to consumers.

I was also not surprised that environmentalists did not suddenly rush to buy Manwich without BPA lining in the cans, and the company laid off 1,500 people due to its higher costs and flat revenue.

Do you want a paper straw that won't work or a permanent one that will never be cleaned? The movement may be temporary. We may see a migration back to straws after the hype dies down, just like we saw a migration back to butter after food lawyers like Center for Science in the Public Interest could no longer hide that trans fats were not healthier because they came from plants. Even the U.S. Congress has undone flawed policies, like their boondoggle with corn-based utensils instead of plastic from 2007-2011. (1)

Before straws this year, there was a war on plastic bags, brought about by, you guessed it, environmental press releases and carefully staged photos of garbage. Now poor people have to pay for bags, a regressive tax, unless they can foot the upfront cost for buying bags. But how often do people really wash their bags? Ever? Well, rarely, a study found. Even the most casual cleaner knows you don't want meat drippings on your counter promoting illness the next time you make food, but most won't think about it in bags. And if you keep them in your trunk the bacteria could increase 10X.

But it's for Gaia.

Except it isn't. A recent study found that a cotton bag will need to be reused 7,100 times (2) for it to make sense from a Life Cycle Assessment environmental impact perspective. 7,100 times means that if you go grocery shopping once per week (and you shouldn't go more often because that's bad for the environment too) you will have to use that bag for 136 years.

As Dr. Trevor Thornton, Lecturer in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences at Deakin University phrased it, "Our assumptions about what is environmentally friendly don’t always stand up to scrutiny."

Which means we should scrutinize first, and waste money on alternatives later.
NOTES:

(1) In Science Left Behind (with Dr. Alex Berezow, before either of us were at the American Council on Science and Health) I wrote about the Congressional cafeteria replacing plastic utensils with compostable, corn-based environmentally terrific alternatives after Democrats gained control of the House in January, 2007. Environmentalists cheered. The Congressional buildings were miserable. The utensils broke and melted easily. Congressional accountants were baffled. The cost was incredibly high, and the utensils had to be shipped on giant, emissions-belching trucks to Virginia to be composted. When the House switched hands again in 2011, the outgoing head of the committee recommended to his replacement that they switch back and Rep. Lundgren of California did. Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi then claimed Republicans were giving people cancer with styrofoam and killing the environment with plastic.

(2) "Organic" cotton is even worse for the environment due to older production requirements in order to use the label.

Virtue Signaling, Plastic Straws, and Political Humor

August 4, 2018 by Dan Mitchell

 

Since I focus on public finance, I think California is crazy because of punitive taxes and reckless spending policies.  But I can understand why other people think California is crazy, period.  This is a state, after all, where politicians come up with bizarre ideas such as regulating babysitting and banning Happy Meals.

Not to mention banning other things as well.

So you won’t be surprised to learn that the Golden State is leading the way in attacking the horrible scourge of plastic straws.

Plastic straws are quickly becoming a takeout taboo. Starbucks has vowed to get its iconic green sippers completely off store shelves by 2020, while Seattle banned all plastic utensils, including straws, from bars and businesses city-wide earlier this month. San Francisco quickly followed suit this week and passed an ordinance that, once approved, will ban plastic straws beginning in July of 2019… It may seem as though the quarter-of-an-inch diameter drinking straw is the least of our worries. But environmentalists say the fight’s got to start somewhere. “We look at straws as one of the gateway issues to help people start thinking about the global plastic pollution problem,” Plastic Pollution Coalition CEO Dianna Cohen told Business Insider.

If I’m willing to claim earmarks are the gateway drug for big spending, then I can’t complain when other people come up with imaginative claims about other types of “gateways.”

In any event, there is a legitimate reason to be concerned about plastic.

Some straws drift out to sea, becoming just one more piece of the 79 thousand-ton colossal floating iceberg of trash called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Scientists who’ve studied the patch, a trash heap wider than two whole Texases that bobs somewhere between Hawaii and California, have discovered it’s essentially a watery pit of litter and illegal dumps that’s trapped in the ocean currents, and it is basically all plastic. …The anti-straw movement may have first picked up steam because…Texas A&M graduate student Christine Figgener…noticed something encrusted in the nose of one of the male turtles. …The team soon figured out it was actually a “plastic straw stuck in his nose,” and removed it, hoping the extraction might help give him some more breathing time on Earth.

But the people on the left side of the country are not actually solving this problem.

Plastic pollution is basically a problem caused by developing countries.

So the politicians in Seattle and San Francisco are making the Nanny State more intrusive without achieving anything.

A classic case of virtue signaling.

But look at the bright side. It’s already generated some great political satire.
Starting with this little girl.

I imagine the plastic straw will be a gateway for operating an unlicensed lemonade stand!

And if SWAT teams run out of harmless pot smokers to harass, they now have new target to justify their budgets. (Editor's Note: Libertarians are opposed to laws against illegal drugs. It's impossible to classify Libertarians as liberal or conservative since they're playing both sides of the ping pong table.  They remind me of Everett Dirksen who was "fiscally conservative and socially liberal", which I find counterintuitive.  RK)

 

And the gun grabbers will appreciate the importance of dealing with high-capacity straw dispensers.

Though it’s unclear how the left will deal with the danger of concealed straws.

Especially since some of those straw nuts will become dealers.

I’ve saved the best for last. For those old enough to remember OJ Simpson and the white Bronco, this image of a renegade toddler will bring back memories.

Remember, if you outlaw straws, only outlaws will have straws.

Next thing you know, they’ll try to outlaw tanks.

It’s a slippery slope!