Enough with the Straws Already!

Plastic straw bans are becoming popular. Malibu has one. So does the UK. People are becoming aware of the harm done by plastic waste in the ocean, and bans are a way of addressing this problem.

As always, actions have unintended consequences. Some people with disabilities, including yours truly, need straws to drink from a glass. There are alternatives to plastic, but they all have downsides.

Before getting caught up in the environment vs. disability argument, let's look at a simple question. How much impact can straw bans actually have?

The most commonly cited statistic for straw use in the United States says we use 500 million of them a day. (That number has been disputed as being unreasonably high, but let's go with it.) Suppose each straw weighs 1 gram. Then we have:

5*10^8 straws/day * 365 days/yr * 1 g plastic/straw = 1825*10^8 g plastic = 1.825*10^8 kg plastic per year




Most of this plastic is properly disposed of, but let's say 1% enters the ocean. That's 1.825*10^6 kg plastic every year. Sounds like a lot.

According to Jenna Jambeck, the University of Georgia environmental engineering professor who brought the public's attention to ocean plastic a few years ago, 8 million metric tons of plastic enter the ocean each year. That's 8*10^9 kg. So completely eliminating all straw use in the US would reduce the influx of plastic to the oceans by less than 0.0002 (0.02%) of the total.

You think my assumption of only 1% of straws entering the ocean is too generous? OK, let's make the outrageous assumption that all the plastic used in straws in the US ends up in the ocean. All we have to do multiply the previous result by 100. In that case, eliminating all plastic straw use in the US would reduce the amount of plastic entering the ocean by 2% of the total.

So, what will it actually take to clean up the oceans? Let's start with diagnosing the problem. A 2016 Ocean Conservancy report says that over half of the plastic that ends up in the ocean comes from just five countries -- China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. Looking specifically at waste that enters the ocean via rivers, a recent study estimated that up to 95% of this plastic enters the ocean from just 10 rivers, all of which are in Asia and Africa. What we are looking at is a case of waste management systems not keeping up with economic growth.

If that sounds like a complex problem, it is. Bans on certain single-use plastic items are likely part of the solution, although enforcement has been problematic. In the longer term, solutions will require both better materials management systems and new materials that biodegrade instead of persisting indefinitely -- a cradle-to-cradle economy.

So, sure, avoid straws if you don't need them. It's always a good thing to cut down on the use of nonrenewable resources and the production of persistent waste. But recognize that this is a minor issue and can be a distraction from more significant ones.

Oekologie Carnival

Hello and welcome to the (slightly delayed) February 15, 2007 edition of oekologie, the carnival of ecology and environmental science. Let's start off by clarifying what ecology actually is. Jeremy Bruno of The Voltage Gate starts off a series of basic ecological concepts by asking "What Is Ecology? ". My favorite definition is one of the oldest -- the study of how organisms interact with each other and with their environment. It is distinct from environmental science, which focuses on humans and, as Jeremy makes clear, it is a very broad field of study.

From here, let's move to posts on the science of ecology. James Millington at Direction not Destination presents a description of Characterizing wildfire regimes in the United States. Johan A. Stenberg of Insect-Plant Ecology presents a post on the open journal PLoS one and a call for less explanatory factors in experimental ecology. If you read ecology papers, you'll probably get behind that second one!

Yours truly has a post on feedbacks between climate and volcanic activity. You might say this is more Earth science than ecology, but I think anything on global self-regulation is ecologically relevant.

Greg Laden presents two evolutionary biology posts, The Evolution of Human Diet and Models of Sexual Selection. I learned quite a bit from these.

Finally, Marcia Bonta presents Grasslands of Central Pennsylvania. This excellent description of Pennsylvania grasslands and the forces that maintain them leads to our next subject area, natural history.

We start off with two posts from GrrlScientist at Living the Scientific Life. Gyroscopes Tell Moths How to Fly Straight explains, well, how gyroscopes at the base of moth antennae tell them how to fly straight and C'mon Baby, Light my Fire gives us a fascinating look at courtship among fluorescent spiders. Did you know fluorescent spiders existed? Cool! Reigh Belisama at Save The Ribble! has a nice post about a riverside nature walk, Locals Enjoy The Ribble's Winter Wildlife. Finally, Dave at Via Negativa gives us two posts, Bluestem and Forester-think: a brief primer. Both are thought provoking discussions on the relationships between humans and nature, which segues nicely to our third subject area, the environment.

Here, we start off with the ever-controversial subject of exotic species. Mike Bergin at 10,000 Birds, presents What is Wild?, which distinguishes between individual "fugitives" and established populations. On the other hand, Nuthatch at bootstrap analysis gives us shooting mute swans versus mute swans shooting blanks. What has more ethical standing, individuals or ecosystems?

Let's continue the water theme for a while. Don Bosch, The Evangelical Ecologist, presents The Desert Blooms, a piece about the recovery of marshes in Iraq and the establishment of Iraq's Ministry of Environment. Garry Peterson at Resilience Science discusses the role of an obscure fish in coral reef recovery from an algal-dominated state in Hidden Ecological Functions and Ecological Hysteresis. Jennifer Pinkley at The Infinite Sphere gives us Karst geology and water pollution and Sewage treatment plant on karst floodplain??? .

What can we do to protect the environment? Wenchypoo at Wisdom From Wenchypoo's Mental Wastebasket presents an appropriately contrarian post titled Green is Making Me See Red. Meanwhile, Vihar Sheth at green | rising discusses the environmental benefits of vegetarianism in You Are What You Eat.

On the political level, Justin Lowery at blog4brains.com presents America: Pro-Immigration? Then Pro-Oil Dependence!. Vihar Sheth at green | rising presents Wasted Gas, on the use of landfill methane. John Feeney at Growth is Madness! points out that the problem isn't population or consumption, it's both, in An unholy matrimony. And Marcelino Fuentes at Biopolitical brings up the issue of scientific uncertainty at Crichton, Laurance, Lomborg, and their agendas.

We finish up on a light note. Avant News presents Ostrich Charged With Multiple Ostricides posted at Avant News, saying,

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of oekologie using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.