The unintended consequences of prohibiting plastic straws.
There is a progressive impulse — indeed, one shared by many who are not formal progressives — to bring all forces into proper balance and thereby achieve perfection. It rests on the assumption, unstated but always present, that the laws of nature allow for utopia if we only have the will and the mind to attain it. That everything can be made just right.
This vision brings with it a punctilious attitude of constant reform. In the words of New York’s mayor, “There is no problem too large for government to solve and no concern too small for it to care about.” Nothing too small — not even the little plastic straws in people’s soda cups and coffee drinks that end up littering beaches. Sure, they account for 0.025 percent of all plastic waste that gets into the oceans (that’s one-fortieth of one percentage point). But getting rid of plastic straws is so simple — it’s worth any benefit that it might yield. Many countries and cities around the world have therefore restricted or outright prohibited plastic straws, replacing them with paper and cardboard straws that everyone can, well, somewhat tolerate. Other than inconvenience, it’s all upside.
Except maybe it’s not, because the world is complicated and not even straws are simple. A recent government report from South Korea examined the environmental harm of both plastic and paper straws across their life cycles from production to disposal and found that paper straws are worse for the environment in at least 10 out of 16 categories. Compared with plastic straws, they have 6.33 times the carcinogenic impact, or the potential cancer risk from a product. Paper straws also have 2.04 times the acidification impact, or the potential to increase environmental acidity and harm ecosystems. Fancier straws made of biodegradable plastic and bio-based polystyrene also performed worse than regular, old-fashioned plastic straws, which had the lowest impact of all types on climate change, human toxicity, particulate matter, and acidification.
None of this is to say that plastic-straw bans don’t reduce the amount of plastic in the oceans. They may very well, albeit by the tiniest margins. But even if one limits the cost-benefit analysis to the environment, excluding economic costs and human preferences, there are so many factors at play in every decision, and they’re all crashing into one another. The smallest “pro-environment” measure may, in fact, hurt the environment in many regards. Windmills and electric vehicles require filthy mining operations, and climate-friendly cars can release more air pollution.
If the aim is social improvement, how are policymakers to know and aggregate all the effects of their choices? Even if they could, how are they to weigh them against each other? How much acidification is worth how many tonnes of carbon emissions?
At some point, decisions must be made one way or another. But there is no perfection to be had in this world. Accepting this truth, perhaps by considering the example of straws, is the antidote to a hyperactive political mind.