Environmental Extremism vs Environmental Realism: Paper Straws WORSE for the Environment than Plastic Straws!

By Nick Mitchell, Fife

If you’ve been eating out lately, whether that be in restaurants, bars, fast-food places or cafés, you’ve presumably noticed many businesses using paper straws instead of plastic ones and the justification given is that they are better for the environment than their prior straw of choice. However, this isn’t the veracity as more carbon dioxide is produced in order to create a paper straw than a plastic alternative.

Many may be reading this article in bewilderment of why eco-friendly activists are focusing on a small issue like straws when there are many issues affecting the climate that are much bigger than this insignificant issue? The answer to that question may surprise you. The reason many politicians are veering their concerns towards plastic straws is because of a study conducted by a 9-year-old. Yes! You read that correctly, the reason politicians are taking forceful action against plastic straws is because of a study handled by a 9-year-old. Milo Cress who was 9-years-old at the time of his study, who was ill-advised and ill-equipped to conduct this experiment came to an estimation of 500million straws used per day by Americans. This statistic has been cited by many high profile mainstream media outlets such as USA Today, CNN, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Fox News and The New York Times. It has also been used by US politicians to propose legislative regulations on businesses to ban plastic straws, of which have travelled throughout global politics including the UK. From a more in-depth analysis, the real number sits roughly at 175million straws used a day by Americans which is still a high number but nowhere near the mind-boggling 500million statistic. I have no problem with a young child improving their abilities or getting into politics and would actively encourage it but on the other hand, I do have a problem with the mainstream media using this illegitimate statistic proposed by a 9-year-old to push their ridiculous environmental alarmist narrative.

Plastic straws may not be good for the environment but how much of an issue are plastic straws really? Well, Plastic straws only contribute to 0.03% of the plastic waste mass globally, so the issue of straws is incomprehensibly insignificant to other plastic products like plastic packaging which accounts for 42% of plastic waste annually. What eco-friendly activists fail to realise is that paper straws have to be created some way or another, which means cutting down trees for paper which has a negative effect on the world we live in or the other option is the use of recycled paper, which needs more electricity and water to create than their plastic counterparts.

One If the most recent noticeable changes is in regard to McDonald’s changing their plastic straws to paper ones to better the environment, however, this is not the case as McDonald’s have repeatedly admitted that their new paper straws are not recyclable when their old plastic ones were. McDonald’s only admitted this when their domestic document was leaked for the world to see. The document in question said in it that their new straws “are not yet recyclable” and also “should be disposed of in general waste”. This reinvigorates that these big businesses and Multi-Nationals don’t actually care about these issues but rather, only want to appease these radical, environmental alarmist activists to appear to be more virtuous than what they are in objective reality.

Banning plastic straws seems to make celebrities and politicians feel morally superior to those who don’t cower to the politically correct narrative frequently portrayed by the mainstream media. It makes them think they are changing something but don’t seem to care enough to fact-check the actual reality of the environmental cost of these policies or willfully ignore the facts to present themselves in a preferable light. Paper straws have a net negative environmental impact, are not durable as they break down while you are still using them which means they can’t be recycled, it costs businesses 8x more to produce paper straws than plastic ones and is worse for the environment as we have clarified in this article. Banning these straws won’t be a world-ending scenario and it will make a difference, however in the opposite direction than planned. It seems unneeded as it won’t make a difference in the grand scheme of things and will actually make things worse for the cause they claim to be so passionate about. These climate activists need to focus on the real issues facing the planet such as China who is responsible for 8.8million tons of mismanaged plastic waste annually. Environmental concerns are real and need to be solved with realistic environmental approaches, rather than the never-ending alarmist extremism of these insane and berzerk activists. These eco-friendly activists are not making a real impact, other than making the straw used to drink a delicious McDonald’s milkshake, soggy.