The latest piece of plastic foolishness to attract the attention of folks looking to make a dent in single-use consumption is the straw. Americans use 500 million of these a day, and none of them is necessary. That cylinder of petroleum, deadly to sea turtles and other living creatures, looks to be next to hit the chopping block in many places, following close on the recently departed plastic bags. More power to the effort, I say. It isn’t enough yet, but it will be if we keep going. Check out the Surfrider Foundation’s ‘Ocean Friendly Restaurants’ program for more info.

When the push was on for Tacoma to axe plastic bags, there were people on the other side of the issue who warned that the “environmentalists and wackos” who were trying to take away our choice to use plastic bags wouldn’t be content with stopping there. They hyperventilated about how it was just going to be something else, and then something else, and that us wackos wouldn’t be done until we’d taken action against all single-use applications.

Damn right. It looks like straws are next. Then maybe polystyrene food containers or plastic bottles, who knows. Plastic bags were always the opening salvo; I thought everybody knew that.