Comment by arp242

Comment by arp242 16 hours ago

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The actual text is "Bans the worst beach‑litter plastics (straws, cutlery, sticks) and cuts pollution" and the tooltip says "Targets the most littered plastic items with bans, design and collection rules, and extended producer responsibility to clean up coasts and waterways."

I looked a bit further, it bans a long list of plastic single-use stuff: plates, cutlery, certain food containers, certain cups, and a bunch of other things. It also regulates some labelling for other single-use products.

It claims that "80 to 85% of marine litter, measured as beach litter counts, is plastic, with single-use plastic items representing 50% and fishing-related items representing 27%".

Saying it's just a "plastic straw ban is" ... eh, well, a straw man. And single-use plastics are a substantial source of litter/pollution (I didn't investigate the accuracy of this claim in-depth).

In conclusion, this seems about as accurate and good faith as the ol' "EU bendy banana myth".

wqaatwt 12 hours ago

How exactly (and if) do plastic straws from the EU end up in the Pacific Ocean, though? Maybe they could have started with that

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  • arp242 5 hours ago

    Because people litter them and it ends up in the ocean? And it is based on research, as I quoted in my previous post.

    My entire point it's not just about plastic straws. I don't know why you need to reduce this to just plastic straws.

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    • wqaatwt 36 minutes ago

      Obviously I implicitly meant all single use plastics. But random people littering is not even remotely the main source.

      Poor and unregulated waste management is. Of course the fact that a lot of western countries were and still are exporting their plastic waste to poorer countries where they somehow end up in rivers and oceans.

      However there is no inherent reason why plastic straws or anything else inherently have to be dumped into oceans.

      Of course silly token measures are much easier than actually regulating the global fishing industry..

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