Engineering360: "These plastics makers just pledged $1 billion to fight ocean trash"

Finally, a visible attempt to solve the true source of the problem instead of eliminating single-use straws in the company cafeteria.

Amen to the straws. Banning straws does very little except to fool some people into thinking they are doing something productive and to irritate people who can do math.

"The issue of straws and marine animals got more heated after a 2015 viral video showing rescuers removing a straw from a sea turtle's nose in graphic and bloody detail.

But a ban may be a bit of a straw man in the discussions about plastics pollution. Straws make up about 4 percent of the plastic trash by piece, but far less by weight.

Straws on average weigh so little—about one sixty-seventh of an ounce or .42 grams—that all those billions of straws add up to only about 2,000 tons of the nearly 9 million tons of plastic waste that yearly hits the waters.

"Bans can play a role," says oceanographer Kara Lavendar Law, a co-author with Jambeck of the 2015 Science study. "We are not going to solve the problem by banning straws."

Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-04-science-amount-straws-plastic-pollution.html

2000 / 9,000,000 = 0.022 percent

It all begs the question:"What ever did we use before plastic straws anyway?"Duh.

Paper straws of course. But try to suck up a McD's milkshake with one of those. Plastic straws don't get soggy after 20 minutes so there's no rush to guzzle down that soda.