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The problem with plastic is that it is too useful and therefore it is environmentally friendly to get rid of.
Cling film can be stretched thinner than a politician’s excuse to keep a fly from getting into a potato salad.
However, as a bulletproof vest, it can be padded more thickly than a Northern Irish accent to prevent a bullet from ending up in a chest.
Paper straws are a vastly inferior alternative to plastic straws, argues David Southwell
It’s incredibly cheap to make and lasts almost as long as a royal family feud.
So, admittedly, it may be stuck around its sell-by date, like a former prime minister.
That’s why NSW will ban all single-use plastic in November.
Which might have been fine if the replacements weren’t, to put it in technical terms, complete rubbish.
They are even more waste than discarded plastic.
To get even more technical, the things they want us to use instead of plastic are just worthless.
Or as is the case with paper straws, they barely suck.
Social media users know the dark secret of paper straws, they just don’t work, or at least not that long
It only takes a few sips for these straws to dissolve into sad, soggy, soggy clumps of mulch.
A replacement for something is normally expected to do the same job.
A straw’s job is to transfer liquid through a thin, sturdy tube.
It is not to turn into pulp that looks like cheap filler in a wall cavity.
To consume a decent drink, or if you’re foolish enough to try a thick shake, you’ll have to ditch paper straws for fresh ones faster than Leo DiCaprio Vogue models do.
This cannot be good for the environment.
It’s not, paper straws are thick fibrous and not suitable for recycling.
Plastic straws and other single-use plastic items will be banned in NSW from November
So they are just as likely to end up in landfills as plastic.
Paper straws also taste bad, they are a bit like drinking through an anorexic cardboard toilet roll tube.
That’s not the only food-related plastic ‘substitute’ that tastes bad.
McDonald’s and many other takeaways are now issuing wooden cutlery instead of plastic cutlery.
Unlike straws, wooden cutlery performs the basic function of transporting food to your mouth.
However, each munch is tainted with the less than pungent taste, in fancy restaurants you would call it ‘a nut’, of balsa wood.
Disposable plastic cutlery is unfortunately being replaced by the bad tasting wooden cutlery
Not to mention the danger of splinters.
The time to stop this madness is now.
If we don’t, plastic straws and flatware are in danger of going the way of that most sadly missed wonder and glory of modern times – the free plastic shopping bag.
Some may not even remember these translucent blessings, which were miraculously peeled off by a cashier and given to you.
Given to you… as in free, at no cost! As much as you needed!
No doubt their negligible costs were absorbed into the total bill.
However, receiving something without having to dig deeper into your pockets, getting something because you needed it, was a small act of generosity and grace in an otherwise unforgiving world.
We are now no longer allowed to have the little miracle of supermarkets giving us free plastic bags to take our groceries with us
Most sensible people agree that free plastic bags elevate and enhance the joy of life.
They were to supermarkets what John Keats is to poetry, what Handel is to cathedral choirs, and what dark chocolate is to Tim Tams.
They were also an important issue of social justice.
They lifted, for a moment, the stigma, shame and exile of a cruelly discriminated, marginalized and despised group.
I am, of course, talking about the absent-minded, the forgetful, and the disorganized.
These most dignified people, I can sadly and personally attest, only remember leaving the stupid cloth or heavier plastic bag in the distant parking lot after the metal gates of the cattle ranch of a supermarket entrance swung shut behind them.
So they are reluctant to buy plastic or cloth bags that only end up in the ever-growing pile of disposable bags in the back of the car.
The more principled will refuse to buy bags.
Plastic has led to more elephants retaining their tusks, which were previously turned into billiard balls
Sometimes the principle is too important, especially when that noble principle is strict.
It then becomes a question of whether they can bear to put a bag of frozen peas in their sweater, while putting jars in their pockets and hanging the little free plastic bags you get for fruit from different parts of their bodies, such as Christmas tree decorations.
Other items must then be stacked in their arms, until they are stacked high like a grocery item leaning on the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
To balance this wobbly construction, the shopper must stagger out and look like a demented circus performer.
Of course, this normally fails with a spectacular tilt that spills rolling fruit into the farthest corners of the supermarket and under other people’s carts.
It is not widely known that plastic was invented to help the environment.
Specifically to hold elephants by their tusks and, thankfully, breathe too.
Celluloid, the first plastic, was made to make billiard balls made from the ivory tusks of hunted elephants.
Unfortunately, celluloid was not a good replacement as it tended to explode.
There is still plenty of empty space left in Australia that could be used harmlessly for landfilling
This failed to impress the players, despite the fact that snooker became a much more exciting spectator sport.
It wasn’t long before less explosive plastic was found for billiard balls, allowing Dumbo to keep his baby teeth.
One objection to plastics is that they are made from a fossil fuel, oil.
That’s true, but not a whole lot of oil, otherwise plastic wouldn’t be cheap.
You would find higher concentrations of gasoline chemical compounds in Ru Paul’s makeup removal kit.
Plastic, let’s face it, is fantastic.
It’s so great that we made an awful lot of it, and that’s the problem.
Other than it’s not really a problem, just push it to the landfill.
All you need is a lot of land that no one wants to use for anything else, that’s about all of Australia minus a few strips of overpriced coastal property.
For once, can’t the Green fanatics be content to show off their personal virtue by rejecting plastic and not forcing the rest of us to do the same?
It’s eco-friendly to let the ecobullies take fantastic plastic from us and only offer crappy replacements.