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Replacing Plastic
Disposable plastic food containers and wraps are probably the second greatest invention in the history of health and wellness. (The first being the flush toilet — that’s indisputable.) The amount of food contamination and spoilage that has been prevented, and the illness that springs from that, has been revolutionary. It’s a revolution we’ve taken for granted.
I want the plastic straws back. The paper ones are pretty terrible — little carcinogenic stir sticks that dissolve into your drink.
For a long time, green activists have been using video of wildlife in the South Pacific or Caribbean Sea struggling with some injury caused by plastic trash. Viewers are never informed that most trash in the ocean comes from Africa and South Asia. It isn’t suggested that our contribution to the problem would be reduced by picking up litter in watershed areas to keep our plastic trash out of the rivers. (In the near future, the explosion of the freed jailbird population will need something to do…)
But finally, I found a paper replacement for a disposable plastic device I can get behind! The plastic 6-pack rings, which actually injure wildlife nearer to home could be replaced by a simple cardboard sheet with some holes punched in it. I haven’t been able to google any images or announcements on this product change — maybe they’re afraid of backlash — but I think, in totality, this is an improvement.
Published in General
I still get plastic straws in Texas. I find that you get plastic straws most places except places like California and Oregon.
Those paper straws are an abomination.
They are. They taste funny, they stick to your mouth, the insides of them stick together if you take too long to drink your drink, and–in the same circumstance–they unwind and fall apart before you’re done. (I’m so old I remember the first iteration of paper straws many decades ago, and the (probable) reasons they were replaced with plastic as soon as such a thing became feasible. They weren’t any better, and did all the same things, all those years ago.)
I rarely use straws at home. When I pick up fast food in a drive-through, I don’t use them, and I throw the plastic straws from the bag into that storage thingy on the car console. A few years ago, I bought a package of 300 plastic straws (because I could) and keep it at home for emergencies. I expect it to last for the rest of my life.
I can also get behind the cardboard six-pack containers. For years, I’ve cut the plastic hoops on the other kind before chucking them in the trash, just as I always cut into the flat, and generally rather heavy, plastic bags that are used for things like sliced cheese, meat, and other food products. A few decades ago, I discovered a dead cat at the entrance to my driveway. She’d been scavenging, had found a cheese-related plastic bag (not one of mine), had stuck her face into it to get the bits out of the bottom of it, and–because she’d breathed while doing so, had created a vacuum which prevented her from getting the bag off her face. It was awful. When I throw such bags out, I slice into them, about half-way across, so that if such a thing ever happens with a bag I’ve thrown out, there’s a place where the animal can get its claws into the bag, and pull it off its face.
I was just listening to Catholic Answers Flannel Panel today and they went on and on about paper straws — and straws in general. They surveyed their YouTube audience asking “what’s worse?” No straw, paper straw, or plastic straw. The ranking was Paper, no straw, and plastic. I agree completely with @dotorimuk. Paper straws are an abomination. I refuse to put those things in my mouth. I’d rather go without.
Petroleum is God’s gift to humanity — including plastics. But, these are the latest alar scare — plastics and forever chemicals. The Left uses fear and social pressure to concentrate power in government. Bastards.
Good suggestions. I frequently do that to the six pack rings as I remove the drinks, but not 100%. I make sure my food product bags are secured into another trash bag for disposal. Fortunately we dont have raccoons out here to make a mess in the trash. (just bears) … I am going to have to look on amazon for plastic straws. I used to go to Popeyee’s Chicken because they were the last place to have plastic straws… At my last visit I got a paper straw… The girl at the window was quite sad, “they’d run out of the real ones”…
Like the masks and the 6 feet rule during COVID the left loves virtual signals rather than solutions.
How are those Fauci candles selling?
Sanitary cellulose also deserves plaudits as one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century.
You may know it as “paper towels”, “toilet paper”, “tampons”, or “Kleenex”, but it began its life as cheap and lightweight field dressings for soldiers in WWI.
I like masks and 6-foot rules.
covid was great for
misanthropesintroverts.In Oregon and Washington the restaurants ignore the ban on plastic straws.
You can’t really do that here. The city will use the health department and pull your licenses.
I looked on Amazon, they’re available there inexpensively.
Thanks to the Trudeaupians, I can’t even get a little sword-shaped plastic swizzle stick in my cocktail any more!
This matters! Those little plastic swords were lifesavers whenever I broke one of my D&D miniatures!
;-)
They’re selling bamboo straws at the dollar store these days.
I haven’t used ’em as straws, but they make pretty great building material for D&D buildings and terrain!
;-)
And Washington State.
I like masks because they make the kooks easy to identify at a safe distance. Nature tells you with rattlesnakes and porcupines but we needed one for kooks.
Yep Hank Hill from “King Of The Hill” said it well: (something like) “The good thing about people getting tattoos and piercings and such, is you can tell someone ain’t right just by looking at them.”
It’s like American flags flying outside homes identifies Trump voters — masks identify Biden voters.
I use a single plastic straw for my water cup that I take to bed with me and occasionally use during the day. I think the last time I replaced the straw was about six or eight months ago when the poor thing just gave out structurally. I don’t think I use more than two per year.
Your package of 300 straws would last me until at least the year 2175……
I remember that. It was broadcast as a cartoon public service announcement!
Imagine a world where you
find natural gas
pump it out of the ground
push it through a pipeline to a refinery
turn the gas into a polymer
extrude the polymer into a tube
wrap the tube in paper
you use the tube one time and throw it away
This is all so cheap, the price of your polymer tube is included in the price of your drink.
My sister is a communist. She thinks we need to outlaw plastic someday.
Encourage her to go first. Eliminate all the plastics from her life. First things to go — her cell phone, her laptop, and, most critically, her car. Remind her this is the only way her proposal will be taken seriously. She needs to set the example.
EDIT: Oh, and you must be deadly sincere when you encourage her. No snark.
They are textbook Dennis Prager. The family leads a conservative lifestyle and they vote hard-core Democrat all of the time. The husband, who is a person that has a PhD in a practical subject, finally said to me that he doesn’t know anything about public policy and he’s not talking about it anymore. He gets really angry, but I defeat him 99% of the time. The other 1% is just strange thinking that I wasn’t ready for.
They just don’t think anything through. Then throw in the universal communist bludgeoning tool: global warming.
“Climate change.”
Surely the day will come when the Climate doesn’t change much at all. And just as surely the lefties will be screaming that it means that the end of the World is near!
Seems like the climate probably didn’t change much over the first few million years, too.