The ban on plastic straws in the EU was motivated by the fact that it's one of the most common forms of litter. 300.000 pieces of litter were studied to come to this conclusion. Furthermore, it's not a real ban. It just requires the producers to pay for the cleanup costs.
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By mass?
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Completely irrelevant. I take it you are more educated on the subject than the researchers who determined this would be an effective measure? Your entire argument relied on a falsehood, that the ban on straws was to reduce plastic waste.
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Just to be clear, if banning straws was actually optimal solution, everyone would go after it. That's the way humans work. Other than that, looks good to say it in certain circles, no thing more.
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Go ahead then. How was the research conducted on behalf of the commission wrong?
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Can you link to the original study? I've spent 10 mins looking, and can't find it. Thanks.
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Okay, so I found what I presume is the press release, which is very good as press releases go (but also a long way short of a paper): http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-18-3909_en.htm … It doesn't state how much straws contribute, unfortunately, though they're on the (long) list of top contributorspic.twitter.com/nNH7Dz8ilN
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Here's what the press release identifies as the worst contributors, together w strategies for each. Not as good as really effective profiling for program optimization, but much better than scattershot "let's fix whatever we can". It'd be nice to better understand methodologypic.twitter.com/3PRhQiIhuG
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It's prioritizing for a feeling of doing good, instead of doing good.
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Fake :) it was actually a well researched and well implemented policy that will do good.
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Okay, you're probably more knowledgeable than me in this regard. Still begs the question: is banning straws the best use of policy available, or is it a cheap tactic to get some votes?
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Single-use plastic of any kind — straws, grocery bags, cutlery, cups, etc — is a very significant yet very preventable source of pollution, which causes measurable harm. There are good cheap substitutes available and very real benefits to eliminating this waste. Good policy

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I really hope this is the case. The cynical take is that it’s like a programmer prioritizing bugs by easiness rather than importance or urgency.
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C’mon Paul. You gotta know that is utterly not true. Movements start with single steps - not re-writing an entire new waterfall / code base. Cc
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Profiling first in no way implies doing a complete re-write. Before doing a incremental refactor or taking a single step you should figure out which actions will have the most impact and which would be a waste of time.
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In the EU, profiling was done. That's exactly why they got to their conclusion. The single use plastics targeted make up for the vast majority of marine litter. That's what's being combated. It is not an attempt to reduce the amount of microplastics, or anything like that.
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How was the problem of marine litter chosen among many other?
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It was plastic straws because it’s simple and relatable. 500m per day get used and large percent end up in ocean
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