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California lawmaker wants to prohibit restaurants from providing plastic straws unless requested

UglyCasanova

UglyCasanova

Lifer
UglyCasanova said:
http://www.latimes.com/politics/ess...aker-would-prohibit-1516142365-htmlstory.html

Calderon said Tuesday he plans to introduce legislation this week that would prohibit sit-down restaurants in California from providing straws to customers unless they are requested. The measure would exclude fast-food restaurants.

Per this link the punishment could be up to a $1k fine and 6 mo in jail

http://reason.com/blog/2018/01/25/california-bill-would-criminalize-restau
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Sounds good to me, a tremendous amount of garbage is created through this as often they go totally unused and are just thrown out. Now if a customer wants a straw they get one and the rest of us deal with less trash.

Good, common sense legislation.
 
I think punishment should be increased to 5-to-life on a first violation. We can clear up space in prison by releasing some harmless potheads that never actually hurt the environment with such reckless straw abuse.
 
UglyCasanova said:
http://www.latimes.com/politics/ess...aker-would-prohibit-1516142365-htmlstory.html

Calderon said Tuesday he plans to introduce legislation this week that would prohibit sit-down restaurants in California from providing straws to customers unless they are requested. The measure would exclude fast-food restaurants.

Per this link the punishment could be up to a $1k fine and 6 mo in jail

http://reason.com/blog/2018/01/25/california-bill-would-criminalize-restau
Click to expand...

I guess the purpose of the thread was to get people outraged. What? They are taking away my freedumb to generate more plastic waste? The f***ng nanny state!

I have no problem with this and think its a good idea.
 
On one side these seems like a stupid thing to legislate but on the other hand it does absolutely no harm and reduces waste a bit. My city added a tax for plastic bags and at first I thought it was stupid but I actually now like how much it has reduced waste and gotten people into the habit of bringing reusable grocery bags.
 
No outrage here either, we use far too many plastic items once. Having something on the books to require people ask for them is fine.
I am assuming places that have drink cups are exempt, as in I mean an item that is obviously meant to be drank with a straw like a juice pack.
 
Caesar said:
I guess the purpose of the thread was to get people outraged. What? They are taking away my freedumb to generate more plastic waste? The f***ng nanny state!

I have no problem with this and think its a good idea.
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I mean I get it and honestly I'm ok with it too, just like I am with plastic bags. I think it's a drop in the bucket when it comes to waste generated by other means though (the bags do get everywhere though). I'd imagine the waste generated by Amazon alone in a single hour due to their shipping is far, far greater than straws or bags. As a society I wish we'd rethink some of this shit.
 
UglyCasanova said:
I mean I get it and honestly I'm ok with it too, just like I am with plastic bags. I think it's a drop in the bucket when it comes to waste generated by other means though (the bags do get everywhere though). I'd imagine the waste generated by Amazon alone in a single hour due to their shipping is far, far greater than straws or bags. As a society I wish we'd rethink some of this shit.
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Amazon boxes go in my recycling. Would like to see their air cushion packing go biodegradable since recycling for that kind of soft PE isn't widely available AFAIK.
 
This is more fucking stupid big government. Even if I accepted the premise that plastic straws are worthy of legislation (and if you read the reason article, you'll see that's a bit nebulous), then what you really want to address is the externality that plastic straw manufacturers are generating when they sell to consumers. Essentially, you should be desiring to tax plastic straw manufacturers/sellers to account for those externalities and the destruction of the public good. Instead you promote legislation that slaps a large fine and jail time on the poor sap who probably barely makes minimum wage for delivering an unrequested .02 cent plastic straw. This is illiberal.
 
UglyCasanova said:
I mean I get it and honestly I'm ok with it too, just like I am with plastic bags. I think it's a drop in the bucket when it comes to waste generated by other means though (the bags do get everywhere though). I'd imagine the waste generated by Amazon alone in a single hour due to their shipping is far, far greater than straws or bags. As a society I wish we'd rethink some of this shit.
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I look at it this way: you reduce humanity's environmental impact through a lot of little improvements like this. Plastic straws from California probably don't amount to much, but combine that with a thousand other changes and you eliminate a lot of waste.
 
UglyCasanova said:
I mean I get it and honestly I'm ok with it too, just like I am with plastic bags. I think it's a drop in the bucket when it comes to waste generated by other means though (the bags do get everywhere though). I'd imagine the waste generated by Amazon alone in a single hour due to their shipping is far, far greater than straws or bags. As a society I wish we'd rethink some of this shit.
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Straws and Plastic bags are rarely cycled though and straws are pretty bad for the environment because of them being small and animals trying to eat them.
 
K1052 said:
Amazon boxes go in my recycling. Would like to see their air cushion packing go biodegradable since recycling for that kind of soft PE isn't widely available AFAIK.
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This. so much of the packaging still goes into the landfill because many municipalities can't handle the recycling. it's also baffling to me that styrofoam remains largely unacceptable. It's gotten to the point that I just toss everything into recycling anyway, because I hope that my intransigence added to that of others will further incentivize these centers to expand their processing capability.
 
I'm now imagining a server dropping off drinks and leaving a straw on the table. A hush descends on the diners as they glare in disbelief at the offending utensil. Then one diner rises and screams, "…
 
Good. Will keep me from having to decline them, as I have been for years. As soon as New York follows suit, anyway.

Though the penalty is a bit ridiculous.
 
BigDH01 said:
This is more fucking stupid big government. Even if I accepted the premise that plastic straws are worthy of legislation (and if you read the reason article, you'll see that's a bit nebulous), then what you really want to address is the externality that plastic straw manufacturers are generating when they sell to consumers. Essentially, you should be desiring to tax plastic straw manufacturers/sellers to account for those externalities and the destruction of the public good. Instead you promote legislation that slaps a large fine and jail time on the poor sap who probably barely makes minimum wage for delivering an unrequested .02 cent plastic straw. This is illiberal.
Click to expand...
The penalty may need to be adjusted but consider that your alternative would increase the price of food at all restaurants and probably do nothing to reduce waste as restaurants can't just switch to a cheaper alternative that I know of. Let's also keep in mind that asking servers not to give straws unless asked is not an unreasonable request.
 
dank69 said:
The penalty may need to be adjusted but consider that your alternative would increase the price of food at all restaurants
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If instituting a pigovian tax on the purchase of straws makes business unaffordable, then the restaurant can choose not to purchase straws. It's the solution you want anyway. If restaurants still want to have straws, they can pay the tax to (either directly or indirectly) to clean up the pollution caused by said straws. Let the market decide if the cost of cleaning up pollution is worth using straws.

and probably do nothing to reduce waste as restaurants can't just switch to a cheaper alternative that I know of.
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I can immediately think of one; not using a straw.

Let's also keep in mind that asking servers not to give straws unless asked is not an unreasonable request.
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Let the boss ask them to do that instead of having the government throw some relatively poor person in jail cause they couldn't remember one of thousands of stupid regulations. I worked in grocery stores in high school and we were told to ask the customers "Is plastic ok today?" cause plastic bags were slightly cheaper. Seemed to have the desired effect. If grocery stores employing 100s of distracted teenagers can manage to change behavior to reduce costs then surely restaurants can do the same without the government throwing people in jail, no?
 
I don't think it would be an unconstitutional law, and sure I'd say the world would be better off with this policy, but come on. This could be accomplished through social movement and would carry the advantage of people understanding why they weren't being given a straw. Probably, some angry people would even tip less and reduce patronage if they didn't know.
 
I have no serious problem with this, but I assume the amount of plastic contained in all the unasked for straws in restaurants is absurdly small. There's probably 500 straws worth of plastic in a single plastic trash bag. Not worth the time it takes to draft the legislation. Not worth the cost of regulating it.
 
interchange said:
I don't think it would be an unconstitutional law, and sure I'd say the world would be better off with this policy, but come on. This could be accomplished through social movement and would carry the advantage of people understanding why they weren't being given a straw. Probably, some angry people would even tip less and reduce patronage if they didn't know.
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Put some signs up if it becomes a problem with the ignorant. Similar to the "we ID everyone" signs in bars where they are required by law to ID even gray hairs.
 
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