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?
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.
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.
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.