Maybe they could do more good by using paper fishing nets, etc, etc.
McDonald’s should contract with the Trump campaign and use Trump’s plastic straws for drinks in their drive-ins throughout the fruited plain. The straws could be imprinted with McDONald’s on them. Guaranteed to be a winner and money maker.
I was referring to the Chinese polluting the Pacific Ocean with plastic.
I am not a big fan of recycling but I’m not against it if it is cost effective by the market. There should not be a single taxpayer subsidy spent for it. At the same time, we don’t want to go back to the days when you could light Lake Erie on fire because we didn’t care for the environment at all.
So I will tolerate recycling if it makes market sense. Generally, it doesn’t.
Because recycling generally costs more than it is worth, the US has been paying the Chinese to do our recycling for us. We stupidly pay them to haul off recyclables, and in turn they promise to recycle it. Then they get into the middle of the Pacific Ocean and they shove it all off the ship.
This has resulted in large accumulations of non-biodegradable plastic accumulating as monolithic “islands” floating in the ocean, which is damaging to fish.
So the unintended consequence of this rabid stupidity is to turn relatively innocuous landfill plastic into a serious oceanic pollution problem.
Put another way, liberals destroy everything they touch. But if it means liberals can’t do more damage with plastic straws, I don’t have any problem with using paper straws, just as I would rather see more widespread use of paper containers for fast food, instead of non-biodegradable plastic and foam containers.
I am not an environmentalist in the least. I am not much of a conservationist. But if a cheap, convenient substitute can be used in place of something that hurts the environment, I say lets use it.
It has been a small inconvenience since I have had to bring cloth grocery bags shopping for food since California banned plastic bags and started charging for paper bags, but in my heart I know that using the same reusable cloth bags for my shopping does a nice job of reducing waste while not costing me another penny or really causing me any inconvenience — only when I have to walk back to the car when I forget my bags.