So, 200 metric tons out of... about a hundred thousand.
We're 0.2% of the way there guys!
Trying to be a little positive. I know it seems like a tiny amount but I think it's a good initial step. I mean a single normal mortgage payment viewed in isolation looks hopeless and pathetic against the full balance but we gotta start somewhere and hopefully this continues and grows.
Microplastics worry me more/too but what do I know?
I personally have zero problem with paper straws, and feel that paper based products should be used everywhere possible.
But it does seem like lazy policy when the greater issue is waste in general, including the fact that 1st world countries just dump their waste on 3rd world countries.
I have 3 major problems with paper straws:
1. They taste like paper. They make my food and drink taste like paper.
2. They get soggy very quickly.
3. They are still garbage. Maybe you can recycle them, but we're already way above our actual quotas of what paper gets recycled, so they add net garage to the landfill.
Whenever I can, I'll drink straight from the cup. It also saves on lids. The only time I get lids is when I'm transporting the drinks.
1. They taste like paper. They make my food and drink taste like paper.
2. They get soggy very quickly.
3. They are still garbage. Maybe you can recycle them, but we're already way above our actual quotas of what paper gets recycled, so they add net garage to the landfill.
Whenever I can, I'll drink straight from the cup. It also saves on lids. The only time I get lids is when I'm transporting the drinks.
This is actually a good point, and the carbon impact of paper manufacturing is higher than plastic manufacturing.
Paper bags as an example produce like 3-5x more carbon emissions during manufacturing than plastic bags do.
Ah I love that joke. I love that ironically it doesn't make any sense to a modern viewer. Pepsi Free was Pepsi's caffeine-free cola; Diet Pepsi was/is the sugar-free product. Diet Pepsi Free was caffeine and sugar-free.
Obviously in 1955 Pepsi Free did not exist, nor did Tab (Coca-Cola's original sugar-free product, before Diet Coke was introduced in the '80s), so the joke is that the café owner in '55 didn't understand what Marty meant when he asked for a Pepsi Free, nor a Tab.
Now the joke falls flat because most people don't remember Pepsi Free was even a thing—it was renamed "Caffeine-Free Pepsi" in 1987, before Back to the Future Part II came out —and Tab was still around until a couple years ago but was incredibly rare after about 1995.
Who was the fictional character that drank Pepsi and Milk?
Just add kahlua and vodka and you're set.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
I carry around a holster full of metal straws and then feel smug when I tell the clerk at the drive through that I don't need a straw. Everyone looks up to me.
It’s not just the weight either, straws are pretty light, so I think in the case of 200 metric tons, look at that in terms of the volume instead. Nobody sees a bunch of plastic bags strewn about on the streets and thinks “oh, no worries, it’s only about 20 grams of waste”.
And that 200 tons was what was collected from that floating ocean dump. If you go by single use plastic sales, it’s about 2339 tons in 2019.
Great that people in Calgary are using less plastic. However, Calgary isn't on the coast and almost all the plastic comes from Asia. The USA accounts for 0.2% of the plastic:
—and Tab was still around until a couple years ago but was incredibly rare after about 1995. 
