Universities Join Effort to Ban Plastic Drinking Straws
“Duke University this summer enacted a ban on plastic straws and other disposable plastic”
Higher education has a tendency to join the left’s cause of the day no matter what it is, so this is hardly surprising.
The College Fix reports:
Universities nationwide ban plastic straws as students bolster movement
Ever since a video of a sea turtle with a straw up its nose went viral, more and more environmental activists have advocated banning plastic straws, and many have heeded that call, from the city of Seattle to Starbucks.
College activists, meanwhile, are doing their part to make sure universities join that cause célèbre despite stats showing rivers in Africa and Asia are responsible for 93 percent of the plastic trash that ends up in the ocean.
This fall, the University of Southern California will no longer offer straws in its dining halls as a direct result of a student-led petition, the Daily Trojan campus newspaper reports.
The petition was launched by the student club Environmental Core, or ECore, whose members declined to comment to The College Fix on whether or not they believe this new policy will actually make an difference in the amount of plastic Americans use or the world’s oceans.
Taking it a step further, Duke University this summer enacted a ban on plastic straws and other disposable plastic, including bags and forks. This new effort joins the college’s established ban on Styrofoam.
In April, Knox College in Illinois also banished plastic straws from campus, replacing them with biodegradable paper straws. The effort was spearheaded by the Student Senate’s Sustainability Committee, which brought the proposal to the school’s food service provider, Bon Appetit. The student group did not immediately provide The College Fix with a statement about its efforts.
[Featured image via Wikimedia Commons]
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Comments
Clearly, these college students have never known someone with physical limitations who rely on plastic straws for nourishment.
Actually, I don’t recall the old paper straws being terribly deficient. The big innovation introduced with the early plastic ones was the accordianesque bellows, allowing the straws to be bent to a custom angle without folding and collapsing. I remember them being of larger diameter, too … before that, power drinkers had to use double straws.
Of all the things activists are working to inflict on us, paper straws probably rank with the more benign.
I beg to differ. Paper straws are good for 12 oz sodas, for example, but become an issue for larger volumes. The ‘accordianesque bellows’ are too often essential for people who cannot bend their necks; people afflicted with neurological or muscular issues, neck/back issues, etc. are most affected.
The infinitesimal contribution to landfills makes this ban overly burdensome for those who have physical limitations.
If people would actually ensure their trash makes it into the proper receptacle and take a step out of their way to recycle as much plastic as they can, this wouldn’t be an issue. Instead, ass hats throw their McDonald’s bag of trash out the window of the car. Somebody sees the plastic straw and…boom…we can’t have nice things now.
Oh, I can’t wait until this news makes its way over to the hospital. If they weren’t really specific in their definitions, I could see a ban on intubation, IV, and all sorts of other plastic catheters.