Public Enemy # 1 — Straw Man

Amidst all the crime, pain and suffering in modern society, civic leaders on the west coast have turned their attention to today’s most urgent public issue — banning plastic straws. That’s right good citizens, just when you thought it was safe to venture out of your homes, plastic straws have been declared a public menace. The time to eliminate the straw and punish the shameful men and women who thrust them on our politically correct society is at hand. The war on plastic straws has begun. Oh the humanity!!

When this particular social engineering fad started, I remember thinking it was so foolish that it would never stick. Apparently I had forgotten that I live in Kalifornistan. It’s hard to be sure of where this war on straws started, but the State of California has certainly helped it spread. Now cities small and large all along the ultra left leaning left coast have made it a priority to banish the plastic straw from our society. And the straw ‘pushers’ are the ones who will be paying the price if they are caught with fines and jail time.

The goals are of course laudable. Single use plastic straws are used one time, and then disposed of. They wind up in our landfills where they wait in perpetuity to decompose along with the rest of our discarded plastic. They wind up on our streets, in our rivers and in our oceans along with other garbage. So why isn’t a ban on single use plastic straws a great idea? To me the answer is very simple. Is this the worst thing in the world we have to deal with???

Certainly we can do better as a society to recycle, reuse and reduce the amount of plastic and other processed materials we use. But let’s take a look at the big picture here folks.

If you look at where the world’s plastic pollution comes from, pollution that makes it’s way out into the sea and harms those cute little critters environmentalists and celebrities like to take pictures with and claim are being slaughtered by our plastic straws, you’ll find 95% of it makes its way to our oceans from just 10 rivers, eight in Asia and two in Africa. These rivers flow through areas with very high populations and through countries with a high rate of mismanaged plastic waste collection, dumping and recycling.

Also consider that more than half of the global plastic waste comes from just five countries, China, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam and Sri Lanka. The United States comes in at #20 on the list. While being #20 in the world may sound horrible, keep in mind that the United States contributes less than one percent to the global total while having the 3rdlargest population in the world. And of the total amount of plastic pollution in the world, plastic straws make up a mere .02%.

Still, the left coast is proud of its effort to stamp out plastic straw usage to eliminate global plastic pollution. San Francisco now claims the title as the largest city to ban the plastic disposable straw. Yes, this is the very same city that spends $37,000 per year, per homeless person for services to get them off the street and still has the 7thhighest homeless population in the nation. The very same city that considers a $117,400 annual salary “low income”. The very same city where human feces and discarded drug syringes foul the streets and sidewalks on a daily basis. Interesting side note: People used to leave their human waste in disposable plastic bags but California has long since made plastic bags a no-no.

I read the so-called news about the horrors of plastic straws and it amazes me that it’s okay to count and report how many straws were picked up on any given street, neighborhood or beach, but the number of used drug syringes is a closely held secret. I guess that shows what these communities see as a priority.

Who pays the price for this? The people who wait tables in California who make a minimum wage of $9/hour plus tips are the ones being targeted by these laws. Should they criminally provide a straw when not explicitly ask for one — where still allowed at all — they are subject to fines or even jail time. Although the City of Santa Barbara claims they will adjust their new law to not include incarceration as a punishment option.

So what are the alternatives? Paper straws which become useless blobs after a few sips or bring your own reusable bamboo or steel straws, sets of which are available for about $10 online and even come with a convenient cleaning brush. One company is even introducing a collapsible metal straw in its own little recycled plastic case you can carry with you all the time. How convenient is that?

Meanwhile, politicians up and down the coast are proudly leading the way on banning the nemesis straw from their borders, shaming companies like Starbucks and Disney into getting rid of straws to avoid the backlash of the eco-elite.

For me, I’d like to know why our elected politicians are wasting time and resources criminalizing the serving and usage of plastic straws instead of tackling real problems like mental health, unemployment, crime, homelessness, skyrocketing housing prices and ever increasing taxes for some of the worst public services in the country.

Yes, we can do better individually and as a nation with the amount of waste we produce. But for our “I’m doing something!” politicians to go after the wait staff in restaurants, who bag their garbage, put it in dumpsters that are taken to recycling centers and landfills (in other words manage their waste) as the local solution to plastic waste in the worlds oceans is beyond stupidity. In reality it is just the latest attempt to change us to someone’s interpretation of “better” through social engineering.

I called this article Public Enemy # 1 — Straw Man not just for the nefarious plastic straws that threaten our very existence, but because this is a straw man. If you don’t support this ban on plastic straws, you must hate the environment and want to kill all the cuddly creatures in the ocean. Remember, every time you drink a milkshake through a straw; you kill a baby <insert cuddly creature>.

Get a grip people.

Bob

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