My wife's birthday was Saturday. So we did whatever she wanted. Starting with breakfast at the Cherry Pit Cafe in Deerfield. She placed her traditional order — oatmeal pancakes with blueberries. And I placed mine — spinach, onion and mozzarella omelet, well-done.
We chatting amiably while waiting for our meal. Matthew brought two large blue plastic glasses of water and two drinking straws.
You don't need a straw to drink a glass of water, unless you're in a hospital bed. But straws have been in the news, literally a federal issue. On Feb. 25, President Donald Trump issued an executive order, "Ending Procurement and Forced Use of Paper Straws," which begins: "An irrational campaign against plastic straws has resulted in major cities, States, and businesses banning the use or automatic inclusion of plastic straws with beverages. Plastic straws are often replaced by paper straws, which are nonfunctional ..."
You could debate the word "irrational." Plastic straws foul the environment, and even leach microplastics into your body. In 2019, California banned them in full-service restaurants, unless requested by customers, and other states and cities followed suit. Both the European Union and Canada banned plastic straws in 2021. The next year, Chicago passed its own Single-Use Foodware Ordinance, but in classical City Council style, there were so many loopholes and exceptions — O'Hare and Midway eateries are off the hook, for instance — that critics called it "greenwashing," aka, a measure that looks environment-friendly but doesn't do much.
I idly picked up the straw, ran my finger over the paper sheath and felt a telltale bump. This wasn't just any straw. It was a bendy straw. Flexible straws were cool when I was a child and they're cool now. I tore off the paper, felt that deeply satisfying scrunch of expanding the little accordion section by bending the straw, popped it into my water and took a long pull.
You could also argue about that "nonfunctional" slur at paper straws. As much as I admire flexible plastic straws, I also have fond memories of paper straws. The kind with red stripes. Yes, they could crush in a lunch bag, or collapse while drinking, and you would have to carefully squeeze them back into shape so your milk could flow. They could get soggy. Sometimes you would try to poke them through the little foil hole into the sealed container of milk — for a while we had these pyramid milk containers you could only drink from with a straw — and the straw would get crushed. But in general, I got through 13 years of public school without feeling lingering ill will toward paper straws.
Not so the president. Somehow, a technology that any 6-year-old can master eluded our nation's leader, who clearly has had some bad, almost unbelievable, experiences with paper straws.
"These things don't work," he said, signing the bill. "I've had them many times. On occasions, they break. They explode. If something's hot, they don't last very long."
They explode? And who but a moron drinks a hot beverage through a straw of any kind?
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I'm glad you brought up paper straws, that's all there were until sometime in the 1970s or 80s as far as I can remember. They worked fine, but somehow, the paper straw industry went away & there's one company in Downstate Illinois that's stuck with millions of paper straws due to the fat fascist traitor's attack on them. The straw doesn't need to last for months, just for maybe a half hour of use & they all used to do that!
ReplyDeleteI'm genuinely baffled at the abject stupidity of people on this!
I also read the story in the Sun Times and felt bad for the business owner until I got to the part about how he voted for Donald and supports his immigration and border policies. My thought then became this: You asked for it, you got it. The Donald. Enjoy your win.
DeleteWhat a thing to get angry over considering he drinks massive amounts of soda from plastic bottles. He's never seen a laundry detergent container or a dish soap container. He is that narrow minded, so insular in his tiny mind. If it doesn't affect him, it's not important.
ReplyDeleteIf I had the power all plastic bags and plastic straws would disappear.
ReplyDeleteYou do have that power Brunan. In your own life. Steer clear of plastic crap. It's not that hard.
DeleteIf you're saying you would like all plastic use to be discontinued, well that's another matter. That's impossible
Until today I hadn't heard anything about this" issue" , I know I dont get out much.
ReplyDeletePlastic straws damage the environment . So much so that California banned their use except for when requested? Others followed.
The current occupant decreed that government procurement offices could no longer purchase paper straws. I dont see anywhere in the EO that affects the use of paper straws anywhere other than government facilities .
Much ado about nothing. Time to head to work. I work at the Dierkson as a subcontractor. Have extensive dealings with the director of procurement. He's never mentioned straws. Maybe I will. NOT
franco
As was said in the Eighties...totally tubular.
ReplyDeleteFelonious focusing on this crap is truly the last straw.
The match in the powder barrel.
Call it whatchoowanna.
How much more of this can sane folks endure?
Banned? So we don't have the choice between paper and plastic? Thank God...we use paper straws at home for our grandchildren and I wouldn't want them to experience a straw explosion. The chocolate milk would go all over.
ReplyDeleteI don't understand how forcing everyone in a country to wear straw hats is trivial?
ReplyDeleteI don't understand how we don't demand more of our "news" reporting. Though let me be clear, this is not a comment on your writing, Neil.
I don't understand Americans. Why have we become so stupid. I remember learning about the argument Abraham Lincoln made to help him come to the conclusion that abolishing slavery was the right thing to do. One of those arguments looked at what would happen if the roles were reversed. How has such an idea become such a strange thing in today's day and age?
I know Heather Cox Richardson has written about it -- and i suggest people read her work -- but the right's arguments are essentially the same as the confederacy's was. Whites are right, everyone else is wrong. White christian men are the only people who know what truth and honesty are and you cannot trust anyone else. You should do what we say, act how we say to act, and never step out of line. What we do and when we do it is right, even if what we do our selves is not what we say should be done. We can do no wrong, and the others can do no right; even if our actions are literally the same.
It sickens me that the major news industries and papers sane wash this argument. And the straws are a perfect example.
It's a straw. You don't even need a straw (most of the time). It's like Asbestos. Sure it works, but it will kill you, so lets get rid of it and use something else, you know, for safeties sake.
Only our First Moron doing battle with a nefarious paper straw designed to undermine society
ReplyDeleteI don't always follow the jump on these blogs, because they're often about Chicago topics that I have no particular interest in. Glad I did on this one.
ReplyDeleteHow does one wash a plastic or aluminum straw?
ReplyDeleteplastic straws should never be washed in the dishwasher. Heating up plastics causes them to leach more chemicals into everything. Avoid plastic as much as you can, regardless of the color or number on the bottom.
DeleteAluminum straws can be popped in the dishwasher after being rinsed in the sink. every once in a while run a proper sized pipe cleaner through the middle.
I do not use straws. Haven't for decades. And I can only speak about the Florida portion of the 21st century paper straw debate. Restaurants in Florida coastal regions were using a paper straw that was thicker than the paper straws of my youth, but they fell apart when immersed in a beverage, unless you finished it in a couple of minutes.
ReplyDeleteWhat happens the the MAGA dark dimension if one asks for a paper straw? Snide comments from the waitress? The chef glaring at you while flipping dolphin burgers? The manager, pausing to flick ashes - accidentally - in your fluoride free water - tells you they don't have to serve your kind. Maybe straws shouldn't be provided anymore, and everyone could just carry their own beverage drinking device made of bamboo remnants or reconstituted bioproducts in the hobo bags we all need to schlep the stuff we need to get through the day with minimal aggravations.
ReplyDeleteThe ludicrous fixation on straws aligns with a great many other ludicrous fixations - like Trump's fixation on water - for example his ire over low flow toilets, and his EO to override drought management policies in California which are too complex for him to understand - releasing critical water supply for 'show', thereby guaranteeing drought later this summer when the water would have actually helped.
ReplyDeleteThe pattern i see in all of this is a hatred for climate regulations, which 1) are particularly valued by voters who do not support him. So its a way to enact revenge on opponents, 2) undermines the Paris Agreement, which Trump loathes, and 3) removes barriers to his goal of raping the land for maximal wealth for himself and his billionaire cohorts (Trump may have been a billionaire only in his own mind before he became president, but he's an actual one now).
He's gutted the National parks, leased out all their assets to the private sector/friends, removed monitoring of air quality in the National Parks (will be essential to not have such data when he begins fracking. Not unlike during the covid epidemic when he wanted to stop testing for the virus so we could 'improve our numbers').
The return of plastic straws at his order may seem silly, but the consequences are hugely and permanently damaging.
Usually, you don't wash a plastic straw -- unless it's one of the thick multi-use ones. How you wash the aluminum or heavy-duty plastic straws is with a small-diameter bottle brush. One drop of soap, block one end and fill with water, swoosh the brush through. Turn around and swoosh from the other end.
ReplyDelete