Straws are Disappearing - What Else Should We Ditch?

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by RyZ

The term "woke".

You’re clear not woke if you didn’t know woke is already dead.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by TheIronMaiden

keurig coffee makers. The amount of plastic that those single pods use is sickening.

We have to make up for the pollution deficit due to lack of pipelines somehow.

And actually most of the newer Keurig cups are compostable.

And the ones that arent compostable we should take to Vancouver Harbour and dump them in the ocean.

[Scroopy Noopers]

Originally Posted by Iggy City

How many 4gb USB sticks do you need? And those damn lanyards that go straight in the trash.

No to mention the various iterations of useless screwdriver-pen-combo.

And crappy baggage tags, hats you’ll never wear, crappy portable phone chargers (these are so dumb anyways, except for maybe 1% of people who may need one at some point)....

[Coach]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

10% of our population.

I'm thinking this has to be pushed to at least 1/3.

[Zevo]

Originally Posted by Locke

We have to make up for the pollution deficit due to lack of pipelines somehow.

And actually most of the newer Keurig cups are compostable.

And the ones that arent compostable we should take to Vancouver Harbour and dump them in the ocean.

Give it a rest

[activeStick]

Originally Posted by Scroopy Noopers

And crappy baggage tags, hats you’ll never wear, crappy portable phone chargers (these are so dumb anyways, except for maybe 1% of people who may need one at some point)....

I fly Mondays and Fridays between Vancouver Harbour and Victoria Harbour and Harbour Air tags each bag with a paper tag before moving them to a trolley labelled with the flight number for manual loading into the seaplane. There's no more than two flights departing at the same time, so the tags seem completely wasteful and unnecessary.

[The Yen Man]

Lawns in general are a huge waste of water and bad for the environment. They really should get rid of it, or have Monsanto develop some sort of engineered grass that doesn't need much water, kills weeds, and self cuts itself lol.

[Wormius]

I think you're advocating something like xeriscaping. I have seen some successful and non-successful attempts at this. Usually the ones that look bad are where weeds get in and take over. If you can control the weeds, the yards can look pretty nice.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by Nyah

With the blue bins and compost, our house has very limited garbage. We put out maybe one bag a week, and even that we're trying to minimize. Whereas if I got plastic grocery bags every time I went shopping, I'd have way too many of them to use for garbage.

I think getting rid of plastic garbage bags is a great first step. If people don't want to buy garbage bags at the store, then they should be trying to cut down on the amount of garbage they produce.

I recycle everything. Still end up using all of my plastic bags. The plastic bags you get at grocery stores are much smaller than the bigger plastic garbage bags. I would estimate that I use 1-2 of them per week. I live alone. So I buy fewer groceries though.

We have no solution at the moment for non-blue bin/compost garbage. Putting things that should not go into the blue bins there instead of the garbage is a much worse solution. I see people doing that all the time, and it merely increases garbage sorting costs.

Also, blue binning stuff isn't all that great either. There are quotas set for how much material has to be recycled and many types of plastics simply can't be recycled. The excess plastic, until recently was sold to China, which is awful, as now you're also incurring costs associated with transporting that plastic to China.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/c...ic-papers.html

https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/r...tion-1.4606893

We're already at a point of far excess of material put into recycling bins than what actually gets recycled. So it might make you feel better putting stuff into blue bins, but it makes literally no difference. I do it, as I'm under the impression that the city gets funds from recycling the cans/bottles (deposit), but I could be mistaken on that.

Anyways, I do agree, the best solution is to use less garbage. For me, right now I've found re-using the plastic bags actually does that. For bigger households it might not.

[Johnny Makarov]

Originally Posted by The Yen Man

Lawns in general are a huge waste of water and bad for the environment. They really should get rid of it, or have Monsanto develop some sort of engineered grass that doesn't need much water, kills weeds, and self cuts itself lol.

Monsanto.... but then if your dog accidentally eats the grass their puppies will have 3 eyes and 2 aholes.

[tvp2003]

Originally Posted by bc-chris

one thing that drives me nuts is the excessive waste i see everyday with my business with respect to the packaging that comes with clothing that we get to embroider.


ball caps - each cap in it's own plastic bag with a piece or cardboard in behind the front panel (even thought the panel is rock hard to begin with)
shirts, jackets - individually wrapped in plastic, lots of 'tissue paper' inside the garment
hoodies - individually wrapped in plastic if they come from "name brand" companies... under armour, adidas. etc.
hockey jerseys - individually wrapped in plastic with tons of other plastic pieces inside the jersey/down sleeves, etc.

Haha - more of a pet peeve of mine but I guess it fits the topic:

Ditch the packaging with dress shirts. Plastic cover, cardboard insert, plastic inserts around the neck and top button, anywhere from 3 to 8 pins, and sometimes a little plastic clip to hold it all together. WHY!?!

[You Need a Thneed]

Originally Posted by nfotiu

crypto currencies and the ridiculous amount energy and disposable hardware used to mine them has got to be human's greatest unnecessary impacts to the environment.

Every gain humanity has made by moving to renewable energy sources (wind, solar, etc) has been offset by the amount of power Crypto takes up.

Essentially the world is powering the crypto world with renewable sources, while everything else remains as dirty as it was before.

[DuffMan]

I am completely on board with over packaging.
Ever try to open kids toys?
Also, things like vitamin bottles, they are about 5x the size they need to be.

[station]

Originally Posted by RyZ

The term "woke".

It’s great if you only use it sarcastically.

[ken0042]

Originally Posted by Johnny Makarov

I'm fine with straw disappearing from restaurants as long as the Server knows that you don't handle the glass with your hands on the rim. That is so effing disgusting.

Add to that- the dishwasher has to make sure the glasses are actually clean. Ran into that the other day- glass had lipstick on it. Had the restaurant used straws, there would have been no need for the previous person to touch their lips to the glass. Cutlery is usually given a more thorough wash, so now glasses need the same treatment.

I guess I'm going to go against the flow here. There are a lot of ways we can reduce the amount of plastic that goes into landfills. However I think that getting rid of straws isn't the first place we should start. Has this become a think because they would tend to float better than a solid piece of plastic? And how are these ending up in oceans anyway? If people aren't throwing things in the garbage correctly, isn't that the problem we should be addressing?

[zamler]

Originally Posted by blankall

I recycle everything.

I also do my best to make sure everything I use is processed properly but in the back of my mind I always wonder how much energy is used to recycle and repurpose everything or even if it is recycled at all.

Also is it really that hard to make packaging and containers out of materials that biodegrade?

[curves2000]

I sometimes wonder if we, as a society and citizens living in one of the richest countries in the world understand the size and scope of our environmental problems?? The problem is far more reaching than some of these minor modifications we make, sometimes with unintended environmental disaster consequences.

Straws, paper, taking 5 minute showers vs 10-minute ones, "Earth Hour" and a lot of factors aren't putting even the slighest dent in our oil and energy consumption. We are or are very close to 100 million barrels of oil per day in consumption, that is over 1100 barrels a second, think about that figure for a moment?

The level of changes to everything that needs to happen to everybody across the board is staggering we are all being honest, and political will and environmental groups aren't being honest either.

I personally have friends of mine who are patting themselves on the back for refusing to use straws, taking 5-minute showers, recycling everything, even things that aren't recyclable etc. The newest piece of BS I heard was their contribution to the environment by refusing to buy Costco branded paper towels and toilet paper as it is double packaged.

Starbucks is replacing their straws in the near future with what I believe is a "sippy cup" style lid for their beverages, I wouldn't be surprised if this lid contained MORE plastic than a regular lid and straw. People aren't going to try drinking expensive drinks without lids and straws, spilling them all over their cars, desks and clothing for the sake of the environment.

There is a lot of smoke and mirrors with everybody and everything when it comes to these topics!

[Fuzz]

If we really want to keep plastic out of the ocean, we should be helping the 3rd world. Any visit to a place like Vietnam makes you realize just how much plastic ends up in the ocean. It's not coming from straws in Calgary.

[Locke]

I'll give Starbucks a lot of credit for making it really easy to just show up with your own travel mug instead of getting a paper cup.

Its sounds simplistic but I'm sure that just by making that easy they're saving tons and tons of waste.

[Wormius]

I was just thinking; with a bit of ingenuity, you could probably just design a cup with an integrated straw. Like you'd drinking from the spout of a tea pot - maybe more stereamlined though.