Everyone has lost their damn minds.
Two California cities have moved to outlaw plastic drinking straws, taking their cues from environmental groups that lean heavily on the unofficial research of a nine-year-old child.
[Also read: House votes to stop using plastic drinking straws]
It’s as crazy as it sounds.
San Francisco’s board of supervisors, for example, voted unanimously this week to ban plastic straws.
“I wanted to start with legislation to change containers like coffee cups which we use every single day, but wanted to then start a bit smaller for now and then move on the other items in the future,” said Supervisor Katy Tang.
The city council was lobbied hard by the San Francisco chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, a 34-year-old environmentalist group whose regular activities include pushing “local governing bodies to find citywide solutions.”
The Surfrider Foundation, which hailed the new city’s move toward a straw ban, claims Americans go through 500 million plastic straws per day.
To the South, Santa Barbara passed a similar ordinance last week banning drinking straws. The new law authorizes fines up to $1,000. It even threatens jail time for repeat offenders.
“The city … has made a second violation of its straw prohibition both an administrative infraction carrying a $100 fine and a misdemeanor, punishable by a maximum fine of $1,000 and up to six months in jail. Each contraband straw or unsolicited plastic stirrer counts as a separate violation, so fines and jail time could stack up quickly,” writes Reason’s Christian Britschgi.
He adds, “Unlike other enacted or proposed straw bans, Santa Barbara’s does not include an automatic exemption for the disabled, who often lack the ability to bring cup to lip. Restaurant owners can request an exemption based on medical necessity, but granting one is at the city’s discretion.”
Like San Francisco, Santa Barbara’s city council was lobbied hard by an environmentalist group, the Community Environmental Council, whose mission includes pushing state and local governments to impose pro-environmentalist laws. And like San Francisco, the CEC hailed Santa Barbara’s straw ban, explaining that something needs to be done about Americans going through 500 million plastic straws per day.
The problem here — aside from the fact that these new laws are unlikely to yield the stated environmental benefit — is that the groups pushing these city governments to ban straws keep citing a highly dubious figure generated by a child.
We’ve been over this before.
The 500-million-straws-per-day stat, which has been parroted by NBC News, Reuters, Time magazine, National Geographic, the Guardian, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times, is most often cited back to the environmental activist Eco-Cycle.
But Eco-Cycle told Reason magazine in January that it didn’t actually come up with the figure everyone keeps attributing to them.
Rather, Eco-Cycle claims it got the number from “the research of one Milo Cress. … Cress — whose Be Straw Free Campaign is hosted on Eco-Cycle’s website — tells Reason that he arrived at the 500 million straws a day figure from phone surveys he conducted of straw manufacturers in 2011, when he was just 9 years old,” Reason reported.
Americans likely burn through way too many straws per day. The litter is almost certainly dangerous to the environment. That said, we should wait until we at least get hard data on all of this before passing strict laws.
