I’ve been doing some day trips that land me in or near Portsmouth, New Hampshire’s mecca for poorly thought-out anti-plastic policy. From ‘shopping bags‘ to paperboard containers, their war on plastic is relentless, even when those replacements are worse for the environment.
We’ve debunked the ocean plastic myth, and even drinking straws declared a scourge based on land and sea, with the appropriate response from progressive posers. Since then, paper straws have continued to make their way into restaurants and the mouths of their patrons without much pushback. I’ve seen my fair share around Portsmouth, and I always have the same thought. How can this engineered paper tube use less energy or emit less carbon? The answer is it can’t. What’s worse, research out of Europe, following up on research in the US, suggests a majority of them could leach (drumroll) forever chemicals™ into people using them.
We’ve jumped past choice and virtue signaling to potential harm, but not much about being environmentally conscious – as peddled by progressives – does anything but make matters worse (by their own standards).
Energy
According to Strawlific.com, ” Each paper straw made requires about 96 kilojoules of energy and emits 4.1 grams of carbon pollutants. However, these numbers mean nothing without something to compare them to.” …
Each plastic straw produced will need around 39 kilojoules of energy and output 1.5 grams of carbon emissions. You read that right, paper straws produce almost three times the amount of carbon dioxide. (In past posts, we’ve shared sources ((2020)) that say it is more like 5.4 times as much.)
For one, many people believe that paper products are less resource-intensive to manufacture than plastic straws. After all, paper is biodegradable and comes from trees, which is a renewable resource.
Unfortunately, that is simply not the case! In fact, paper products in general require more energy and resources to manufacture than plastic products (Source). This may seem counter-intuitive, but it’s actually true!
Both sites, by the by, insist plastic is worse based on anecdotal, unverified or debunked narratives common to the anti-oil Left so they are not anti-straw, and neither is the New Atlas. They published a piece on 8/24/2023 titled “Paper straws not so eco-friendly, 90% contain toxic “forever chemicals.” The culprit appears to be PFOA and PFAS, which have been labeled as forever chemicals but absent any actual evidence. It is assumed they are by the same sort of people who ponder anti-plastic policies in places like Portsmouth.
The majority of brands tested (69%) contained PFAS, with 18 different PFAS detected in total. Paper straws were most likely to contain PFAS, with the chemicals detected in 90% of the brands tested, albeit in highly variable concentrations. Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), a compound linked to high cholesterol, a reduced immune response, thyroid disease and increased kidney and testicular cancer, was most frequently detected. PFOA has been banned globally since 2020. Also detected were trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) and trifluoromethanesulfonic acid (TFMS), ultra-short-chain PFAS that are highly water-soluble and so might leach out of straws into drinks.
The US Study that inspired the European one can be found here: ‘The last straw: Characterization of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in commercially available plant-based drinking straws.’ It’s about as exciting a read as your average court opinion, but if PFAS and PFOS keep you up at night (I sleep like a drunk Irishman even when sober), you might want to carry your own straws with you.
To be safe, the researchers suggest people start using stainless steel straws, or ditch straws altogether.
“The presence of PFAS in paper and bamboo straws shows they are not necessarily biodegradable,” Groffen said. “We did not detect any PFAS in stainless steel straws, so I would advise consumers to use this type of straw – or just avoid using straws at all.”
I had to rely on older data for the energy burden of stainless steel straws but they also had numbers for glass as well as th number of uses required to abate the carbon cost.
[A] single stainless steel straw is responsible for using 2420 kJ of energy, releasing 217 grams of carbon dioxide, and costs $3.00. A single glass straw is responsible for using 1105 kJ of energy, releasing 65.2 grams of carbon dioxide emissions, and costs $0.32. … A single bamboo straw is responsible for 754 kJ of energy, releasing 38.8 grams of carbon dioxide emissions, and costs $1.29. In order to abate the embedded energy and carbon dioxide emissions incorporated in a stainless steel straw, glass straw, and bamboo straw, the stainless steel straw must be reused 102 times (energy) and 149 times (carbon dioxide), the glass straw must be reused 45 times to make up for both embedded energy and carbon dioxide, and the bamboo straw must be reused 32 times (energy) and 27 times (carbon dioxide), rather than purchase and dispose of a plastic straw.
The linked resource has different factors for paper and plastic that show paper as less energy dependent, but that may be the result of the early versions that sucked, as in you couldn’t. Paper straws are much more robust in 2023 than in 2018, making them functional beyond a sip or two, which I suspect explains the higher energy and carbon cited above. All of which leads to a common conclusion when dealing with the knee-jerk left. Plastic straws aren’t that bad and never were, and while switching should be a matter of choice, paper might be the wrong choice, and depending on where you go, you might not get to decide.
