this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2026
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Jeff Bezzos:
So I've wanted to do this for a minute..
But how many paper straws would you have to use to offset one of these explosions? How long would it take to offset one of these explosions through straw use?
Writing this now I was surprised by the results...
Source for plastic v paper straw data
So apparently plastic straws are actually more carbon neutral than paper straws, but for the purposes of this analysis I'm going to carry it through to find out how long it takes to create equivalent emissions.
Paper straws:
Call it 1430 grams of emissions per straw (which is wild btw)
Plastic straws:
Call it 610 per plastic straw. Still wild for something which weighs less than a gram.
This is also from the thesis
So yeah.. not great.
Gonna be using 825 tons of carbon dioxide emitted from Hank Green's video.
I think Hank is working in US standard units here.. which is also weird and annoying but whatever... We're getting to units of rocket explosion per straw so it's fine..
And I'm going to be using 500 million straws per day, which is cited in the thesis from a 2017 study and repeated elsewhere in other studies on this.
It's not great but what even are we doing here..
I don't know how we get a plastic straw versus compostable straw use rate (what proportion of straws are still plastic versus how many are now paper or some other alternatives)
But we get 820 additional grams of emissions for each straw swapped.
500 tons to grams is:
838238016
Divided by the difference in co2e foot print per straw...
838238016 / 820 is about 1022240, in other words, about a million.
So for about every million straws swapped from plastic to paper, one giant fiery rocket explosion of CO2 emissions occurs.
The US consumes straws at a convenient rate of 500 million a day, so if ALL of those straws were converted to paper, we're setting off about 500 of those explosions per day.
I was always given to understand that the straw thing was because plastic straws get out and fuck up wildlife, but that message seems to get buried in handwringing over climate change so often that I suspect bad actors are at play spreading all these memes.
Idk. It's not at all clear to me why or what's the point of these very performative acts.
There is almost no way it represents any practical differences to wildlife. It seemed to me something companies could "do" as a form of visual way of communicating that they were "doing something", and it's something that was done in sync, with no real consent of the consumer. It's not like people were driving this. It was very much from the corporate side.
Source: your ass?
Source: the about an hour of research I did on straws to write the response. I mean I read a fucking thesis on it and probably 4-5 articles. I mean the links in there you lazy fukkah
So maybe shove it up your ass.
Oh you editing now? Go find evidence that the transition from plastic straws to paper has had any measurable impacts on wildlife.
That doesn't really get to the impact of the plastic. Something like 100% of humans have plastic in their blood. It's there, but mostly it just seems to be inert. There are thousands of problems we are creating that we know are causing widespread extinctions. I'm not opposed to reducing plastic use, but forcing a major inconvenience for dubious results burns a lot of goodwill. That's why this is a popular wedge issue for the right, even though it mostly affects liberal coastal cities.
It blows my mind how you’re saying that like it makes it ok
Well the sentence after that is rather critical. It's not that 100% of humans have it, so who cares about animals; it's that we have an enormous highly-scrutinized test population, and in general the impacts are mild to imperceptible. I'm not blowing off this concern; we need to keep studying it in humans and animals (and the results may be different!).
But right now there are scores of critical world issues that can be tangibly addressed. Asking people to make lifestyle changes for possibly zero meaningful impact is actually counterproductive.
Does that include the co2 generated by the incineration of each straw at the end of their life? Assuming you're in a region that can incinerate trash instead of landfilling it.
I am not sure if that makes me feel better for the explosion or worse for the straws.
But that is awesome!
This is just.. Crazy bruh.. 😭
Have you noticed the intense UV this summer? I think he legit ripped a hole in the ozone layer with that explosion.
Somebody contact the investigative journalists at the Washington Post!
Oh...wait...