[...] "Plastic pollution is surpassing crisis levels in the world's oceans, and I'm proud Seattle is leading the way and setting an example for the nation by enacting a plastic straw ban," Mami Hara, the general manager of Seattle Public Utilities, told KOMO News.
The National Park Service estimates 500 million straws are used by Americans each day.
The Seattle ban actually began with an ordinance prohibiting one-time-use food service items in 2008, but the city has allowed exemptions on certain items every year since. For example, Styrofoam food packaging was banned in 2009, according to the Seattle Times. But because of the market, plastic utensils and straws have been exempted in Seattle's ban until now, the newspaper reported.
Seattle bans plastic straws, utensils, becoming first major US city to do so
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @03:45AM (9 children)
This may come as a shock, but before the age of plastic people quite ably used disposable paper straws. I expect we'll see their return to prominence as the anti-one-use plastic product march gains steam.
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Wednesday July 04 2018, @06:29AM (7 children)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bitstream on Wednesday July 04 2018, @07:05AM
"For some reason" = Spam and lobbying. Like then and like it's now ;-)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday July 04 2018, @12:43PM (4 children)
When you ignore cost and practicality, then anything becomes reasonable. Why not just hire people to hold food for the diners so that no bowls need to be used at all? There after all is no real benefit to bowls at all other than cost and practicality.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @03:29PM (2 children)
Jesus, why do you always defend the worst parts of corporate behavior?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 05 2018, @04:15AM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday July 06 2018, @12:23PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 04 2018, @04:44PM
How about you hold my balls? Yeah, that's it.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday July 04 2018, @06:33PM
Plastic has several benefits over other materials. It's also got unique costs.
E.g., plastics are much lighter than unglazed not-highly-fired ceramics of nearly equivalent strength. (You did say it breaks down quickly, so it can't have been highly fired. Even adobe doesn't break down quickly.)
In your comparison you're probably imagining unglazed china as the ceramic, but that wouldn't meet your description. I'm actually having trouble thinking of a ceramic that *does* meet your description. Possibly something fired in a cooking oven, but I would think that would break down to quickly to be cleaned several times, unless the cleaning didn't involve water.
FWIW, if you want a good choice that's fairly light, durable, and ecological, try wood. You shouldn't soak a wooden plate, but an unfinished wood is naturally anti-bacterial, and you could wash it briefly, and clean anything stubborn off with sandpaper. (This would probably not be acceptable in the US for commercial use. But cutting blocks are used in kitchens all over the world.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Wednesday July 04 2018, @07:04PM
Think of the trees