Trump Rescinds Biden’s Banal Ban on Plastic Straws
“Enjoy your next drink without a straw that disgustingly dissolves in your mouth!!!”
Back in July of last year, Joe Biden introduced a policy to phase out federal procurement of single-use plastics, including straws, by 2027 and eliminate them from all federal operations by 2035.
This was a continuation of the trend of Biden’s handlers foisting Blue-State policies on the rest of the country, as the ban on plastic straw ban has hit a number of areas plagued by eco-activism.
For example, Washington, D.C. enacted a plastic straw ban in 2019, and then the Biden Department of Energy appointed an enforcer.
Warning letters in hand, Zach Rybarczyk patrolled the food court at Union Station, looking for offenders.
Past Auntie Anne’s, past Johnny Rockets. At Lotus Express, a Chinese food joint, Rybarczyk peeled the wrapper from a red straw and bent the end — the telltale giveaway.
Plastic.
Because this was such a good use of our resources.
Now plastic straws are on their way back.
President Trump said on Friday that he would stop a plan by the Biden administration to phase out plastic straws in favor of paper ones across the federal government, saying they don’t work and it’s “BACK TO PLASTIC.”
“I will be signing an Executive Order next week ending the ridiculous Biden push for Paper Straws, which don’t work,” Mr. Trump posted on his Truth Social site.
…It was not clear whether Mr. Trump planned to call off that wider effort, or whether he was focused just on bringing back plastic straws. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for clarification.
The U.S. government is considered the world’s biggest buyer of consumer goods, and its planned shift away from plastic had been considered a significant milestone in a global effort to tackle a plastics pollution crisis.
“We’re going back to plastic straws.” –President Donald J. Trump 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/GONNjP6UNn
— President Donald J. Trump (@POTUS) February 10, 2025
Of course, one has to ask how much of this “plastics pollution” crisis has been sponsored by USAID-funded NGOs.
Furthermore, here is a list of the most plastic-polluted rivers in the world.
- Yangtze River (China)
- Indus River (India and Pakistan)
- Yellow River (China)
- Hai He River (China)
- Ganges River (India)
- Pearl River (China)
- Amur River (Russia/China)
- Mekong River (Southeast Asia)
- Nile River (Africa)
- Niger River (Africa)
What do they all have in common? Many things, but they aren’t our country, and our nation isn’t poisoning oceans with massive amounts of straws.
In making the announcement, Trump also noted how awful paper straws are to use.
“Crooked Joe’s MANDATE, ‘NO PLASTIC STRAWS, ONLY PAPER,’ IS DEAD! Enjoy your next drink without a straw that disgustingly dissolves in your mouth!!!” he wrote.
Trump had made similar remarks of annoyance back in 2020 on the campaign trail, saying: “They want to ban straws. Has anyone tried those paper straws? They’re not working too good.
“It disintegrates as you drink it.”
"WE'RE GOING BACK TO PLASTIC STRAWS" 🔥 pic.twitter.com/k69mMqHT3v
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) February 10, 2025
Crooked Joe’s MANDATE, “NO PLASTIC STRAWS, ONLY PAPER,” IS DEAD! Enjoy your next drink without a straw that disgustingly dissolves in your mouth!!!
Donald Trump Truth Social Post 07:16 AM EST 02/08/25
— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) February 8, 2025
Personally, I had a lovely Lava Flow cocktail experience ruined by a paper straw. I. Will Never. Forget.
Apparently, millions of Americans feel the same way.
🇺🇸President Trump signs EO on paper straws:
“It was number one trending for three days…”
“We’re going to plastic straws. These things don’t work. They break. They explode. If something’s hot they don’t last very long..I don’t think that plastic’s going to affect a shark very… pic.twitter.com/UpXfqjs9u1
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) February 11, 2025
Now, I am just waiting for a Hawaiian Judge to stop action on that executive order.
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Saving trees.
Nice start. Now let’s do light bulbs that are cheap and give good light, toilets that flush, dishwashers that clean dirty dishes, clothes washers that clean dirty clothes, and shower heads that provide water. Use the power of the federal government to require states to give their citizens a choice of whether to use gas appliances. The hallmarks of past Democrat administrations have been: (1) appeasing our foreign enemies) and (2) depriving Americans of their right to choose everything but abortion. Make America work again! Make America free again! Make America great again!
…and plastic bags so I can walk out of a supermarket like a gentleman instead of looking like a thief.
You forgot gas cans that don’t require 3 hands to use.
“Nice start. Now let’s do light bulbs that are cheap and give good light [my high-quality non-99-cent ones work fine and still work after four years], toilets that flush [mine work just fine], dishwashers that clean dirty dishes [my one year old one does just fine], clothes washers that clean dirty clothes [my FRONT LOADER works very well indeed], and shower heads that provide water [HERE I AGREE 100%! (ever try to rinse shampoo out of a beard with a low-flow shower head?].”
While I fully agree that it is not up to the federales to be regulating all of these things I – for reasons I do not understand – just don’t have all the problems everyone talks about. I buy good-quality LED lamps (“bulbs”) with high color rendering index, and seemingly long life. My outdoor lights that run from sundown to 3AM are six years old and still not in need of replacement. My low-gallonage toilets flush just fine, but I have been living in dwellings where the waste pipe angle is suited to them; they don’t work well in older homes. The dishwashers I have had of late do a GREAT job and are quiet. I HAD a “wash plate” HE washer that did not clean the clothes. Front load HEs work just fine, and I use two tablespoons of detergent just like the washer repairmen say.
I guess I am doing this all wrong; I just have no complaints.
On the other hand, don’t get me started about federally mandated things in automobiles!
Agree 100%, although we still use our reliable (so far) 25-year-old Kenmore pre-K-Mart agitator washer and electric dryer. Our only repair so far was a dryer belt for ~$10. Can’t beat service like that.
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As a curious fourth grader who had just started an environmental project to discourage restaurants from providing straws by default, Cress decided to look online to find out how many straws are used each day in the United States. Not being able to find any statistics, he called straw manufacturers directly and estimated the 500 million figure based on numbers they provided him ….
.It turns out, however, that the number is imprecise and originates from Milo Cress, a young environmentalist who researched straw usage to come up with the 500 million estimate when he was just nine years old.
https://www.npr.org/2018/07/22/631254978/one-childs-outsized-influence-on-the-debate-over-plastic-waste
It was all virtue signaling from the beginning.
During the peak of the craze I had a lot of fun asking my greenie friends to describe the route by which a plastic straw got from where we were sitting at that moment to the ocean. Quite often I got to the last refuge defense: if inconveniencing an entire nation saved one baby sea turtle, it was worth it.
There goes my plan to corner the black market in plastic straws.
The whole campaign against plastic straws turned out to have been based, not on any real scientific research, but on some ten-year-old’s science fair project.
Not on real research, either. But on an estimate the 9yo came up with.
And no further research has been done, it appears. (At least not that anyone has acknowledged.)
Missed opportunity, Leslie. Headline should be:
Trump Bumps Biden’s Banal Ban on Plastic Straws
It’s more like Biden’s ANAL plan. Like most of his other ideas.
AOC is defending paper straws on the grounds that they don’t suck.
The virtue-signally West Coast states have been “recycling’ plastics by loading their trash onto Chinese ships to be “recycled” in China.
Of course, the thrifty Chinese have been dumping these vast loads as soon as they hit the 12 mile limit, which is why the amount of plastic floating in the Pacific has so mysteriously increased.
As to paper straws… I hated these disgusting paper things since milk-time in grade school in the late 50s. The always slightly warm milk and that little straw getting soggier and soggier as you sucked… You mean to tell me that technology hasn’t improved the paper straw in 60 odd years?
I also remember paper straws from grade school in the 1950s and ’60s. If we didn’t drink our milk fast enough the straws came undone!
Virtue signaling and stupidity has made the “paper straw” problem worse. Nearly all brands are coated with microplastics, which are ingested and probably never leave the human body. The very tiny number of straws that ends up in the water end up providing ‘poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)’, chemicals and a microplastic diet to plankton and little fish which eventually contaminate the whole food chain.
Let’s hope these things get out of the American diet as soon as possible!