Scientists use biodegradable straws to protect lab-grown coral from hungry fish(apnews.com)
apnews.com
Scientists use biodegradable straws to protect lab-grown coral from hungry fish
https://apnews.com/article/coral-restoration-biodegradable-straws-ae23b903da2f91becd489d40e8cd9e17
8 comments
those straws are made from a pretty neat material:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyhydroxyalkanoates
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyhydroxyalkanoates
The real question is why places use those horrible cardboard things.
Probably price? I don’t know how much the straws in this story cost, but the horrible cardboard ones we all like to use as a punching bag are probably bottom of the barrel in terms of price and quality.
If all kinds of straws would disappear overnight, people's quality of life would not be affected the slightest. You can drink from a glass or bottle just fine without a straw. All the endless discussion of environmental effects of straws made of different materials is confusing to me. If it is such a serious issue, take steps to stop producing them and move on to more important things.
Difficulty with drinking and swallowing are fairly common. Straws help.
> If all kinds of straws would disappear overnight, people's quality of life would not be affected the slightest
[Citation needed]
For example, take the boba straws mentioned in the article. The experience of sucking up the tapioca balls as you consume the drink depends on the wide straw.
Remove the straw, and the experience is totally different; you would get hardly any tapioca balls until you were all the way to the bottom of the drink.
Now, maybe you don't give a shit about that, but then it's just a value judgment.
[Citation needed]
For example, take the boba straws mentioned in the article. The experience of sucking up the tapioca balls as you consume the drink depends on the wide straw.
Remove the straw, and the experience is totally different; you would get hardly any tapioca balls until you were all the way to the bottom of the drink.
Now, maybe you don't give a shit about that, but then it's just a value judgment.
>If all kinds of straws would disappear overnight, people's quality of life would not be affected the slightest.
straws help offset a variety of dental issues when consuming things like soda or tea, and they provide a means for lesser-able people to drink independently.
a straw was one of my first pieces of 'accessibility equipment' after a spinal cord injury, and it helped my psyche tremendously during recovery to be able to drink the stuff provided by my hospital without having to be fed it by a nurse or loved one.
there are worlds of depth in every day objects that are taken for granted.
straws help offset a variety of dental issues when consuming things like soda or tea, and they provide a means for lesser-able people to drink independently.
a straw was one of my first pieces of 'accessibility equipment' after a spinal cord injury, and it helped my psyche tremendously during recovery to be able to drink the stuff provided by my hospital without having to be fed it by a nurse or loved one.
there are worlds of depth in every day objects that are taken for granted.
A government or philanthropist somewhere is throwing cash at corals, trying to keep them alive, without fixing the root cause of why they're dying in the first place.
I'm guessing this "solution" could even be net negative for world coral populations.