What if I told you that a 9 year-old boy and a sea turtle would shape San Francisco’s restaurant laws?

In 2011 a nine-year-old Vermont boy observed that Americans waste a copious amount of plastic straws. Unable to find accurate statistics on daily straw usage, he used the issue as the basis for his environmental science project.

He conducted the project by telephoning manufacturers and asking them to estimate their straw production per day. The phone surveys yielded an estimated five hundred million plastic straws used per day across the United States. 

500 million plastic straws per day is a staggering figure. It is also inaccurate. The actual number is estimated to be around half of that.

I can’t fault the boy for trying. He showed impressive initiative and drive. Unfortunately, that is not the end of the story.

The exaggerated and inaccurate findings were picked up and expanded upon by an environmental group located in Boulder. The figure was further given an imprimatur of legitimacy when the project was featured on the National Park Service’s website. The statistic was soon disseminated to the general public.

Mainstream News outlets such as the New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and Wall Street Journal cited the figure.

500 million plastic straws used per day. In the United States alone. Now there was an alarming number which can be easily recalled.

Flash forward to 2015.

A disturbing Youtube video emerged of a sea turtle with a plastic straw lodged deep in its nostril.

A free sea turtle

In the video an environmental activist ham-handedly attempts to pry the straw out of the turtle’s nose with a pair of pliers.

The turtle weakly opens and closes his mouth in pain and jerks his head to avoid the pliers. Blood begins streaming down the turtle’s face and the blood is soon splattered on the walls of the skiff. The straw is finally extracted after eight minutes.

It is a wretched and tragic sight. 

The video was ubiquitous by 2018. The wailing turtle provoked a collective response of disgust towards the human race and anger at the increasing pollution in our oceans. That 500 million plastic straw number was bouncing around too.

Now the board was set.

An emotional video coupled with an alarming statistic provides the ideal impetus for an incipient environmental movement. Quickly the chatter for reducing plastic straw usage grew louder.

This combined with our San Franciscan desire to be the vanguard of fashionable activist movements primed us to push the plastic straw issue further than any other city or state.

And so the process began whereby “important issues” move from debate to force and then to an acceptance of a “new normal”.

  1. We should probably use less plastic straws 
  2. Restaurants should be persuaded to make plastic straws optional rather than mandatory
  3. Restaurants should be prohibited from providing plastic straws to patrons unless requested by the customer
  4. Paper straws are a good alternative to plastic straws
  5. Restaurants should offer the option of paper or plastic straws
  6. Restaurants should probably just use paper straws
  7. Restaurants should not be allowed to use plastic straws
  8. There needs to be a law banning plastic straws. 
  9. Plastic straws are now banned
  10. Oh, Paper straws are a little annoying? C’mon you guys are saving the planet, so it’s for the greater good
  11. See paper straws aren’t all that bad?

The tendency to succumb to moral panics and fall into this process over and over again (hello ‘slow streets’) stems from an honorable urge to effectuate positive change.

Humans have a natural desire to be part of a movement bigger than themselves and this can lead to impulsive and unreasonable actions meant to solve geopolitical issues.

We tend to distill complex global issues into simple solutions. And we are often unwilling to accept that some things remain out of our control.

This fundamentally human impulse to help our communities should be controlled, but not disparaged. Plastic pollution in the ocean is an important issue. It is good that people care about the issue.

However, the straw fiasco reminds us to be cognizant of our tendency to slip into romantic notions.  There is a need to exercise prudence when addressing complex global problems and to always weigh the costs and benefits of government action.

In this case banning plastic straws is ludicrous from a cost-benefit perspective.

A reduction in plastic straws could make a tiny dent in the ocean’s pollution problem, but plastic straw usage in the United States is not a serious environmental threat. Ninety percent of plastic waste reaches the ocean through just ten rivers. Eight of those rivers are in Asia and two of the rivers are in Africa. 

The only significant threat the United States poses to the issue of plastic in the ocean is when we “recycle” our plastic. The plastic is transported to Asia and a portion of that waste ends up in the ocean.  

So I sit here, annoyed at this soggy, useless mess of a straw that keeps trapping tapioca balls, but also somewhat hopeful as I’m reminded of our human inclination to care, however misplaced that care can be.