Posted on 12/04/2018 3:39:16 AM PST by servo1969
Plastic toys, sí! Plastic straws, no!
Legoland, a theme park dedicated to celebrating plastic toy bricks, has announced that as of next year it will no longer provide single-use plastic straws to park visitors.
The decision came down last week from Merlin Entertainments, a British company that operates 120 attractions worldwide, including nine Legoland parks.
"Like many of our guests, we are concerned about the negative environmental impact associated with the disposal of plastic straws," says Merlin CEO Nick Varney in a press release. "It is something we can act on immediately as we continue to assess how we minimize the use of plastics within our business."
By December 31, the company says, there will be no single-use plastic straws or lids in Legoland's Florida park. Alternatives to single-use plastic straws will be provided only if required for a product or at a visitors' request.
The straw crackdown at Legoland parks comes a few months after the makers of the actual Lego toys announced their own anti-plastic initiative.
In March, The Lego Group—a separate entity from Legoland parks—announced that from now on, all the plastic trees, plants, and other "botanical elements" it produces will now be made of sugar cane–sourced plastic, which is biodegradable. The company has also committed to using "sustainable materials" in "core products and packaging" by 2030.
That Lego and Legoland have both made a public show of cracking down on plastic use shows both how far the anti-plastics movement has come in such a short time and how divorced from real environmental concerns it actually is.
According to the BBC, Lego sells some 75 billion plastic bricks each year globally. A big consumer of these bricks, is, of course, Legoland.
The newest park, which opened in Dubai in 2016 contains some 15 million Lego bricks. Assuming each of these bricks weighs 1.35 grams—the weight of a standard 2x2 Lego brick, according to Bricklink—that adds up to about 20 metric tons, or one percent of the plastic estimated to get into the word's oceans each year.
Needless to say, this a huge amount of plastic.
If Merlin Entertainment and Lego were truly concerned about the negative effects of plastic consumption on their environment, one would think they would have to reconsider much more than the amount of straws their theme parks consume. And while biodegradable plastics are less dangerous if they wind up in the ocean, only about 1–2 percent of Lego's products are made of biodegradable plastics; the vast majority are still standard, petrolum-based plastics.
Indeed, most of the arguments deployed to justify straw bans would be applied with even greater force to banning Legos.
Unlike straws—which some disabled people actually require—no one needs Legos. They're just a toy, after all, and one for which there exists numerous biodegradable alternatives, from wooden blocks to BuckyBalls. Who knows? Maybe Legos could function as a "gateway plastic" whose prohibition encourages former Lego users to look for other plastics they can cut out of their lives. That, after all, is what various activists have said about banning plastic straws.
That neither Merlin or The Lego Group are considering going into retirement suggests two not necessarily mutually exclusive things. One, that the companies' commitment to lessening the impact of plastics on the global environment is superficial. Two, that they understand their own plastic products are not really part of the problem.
Almost all of the plastic that gets into the world's oceans each year comes from countries with poor waste management systems that allow of a lot of trash to leak into the environment. These are, unsurprisingly, poorer countries. By contrast, the United States and Europe, which host six of the world's nine Legoland parks, are responsible for roughly two percent of annual marine plastic waste.
Private companies are of course free to have whatever straw policy they want. But for plastic pushers to single out plastic straws is hypocritical—and it gives cover to an unscientific and pettily authoritarian anti-straw crusade.
I understand the desire to save the erf but we can't realistically get rid of all single-use plastic items. We can work on cutting down on waste but not this.
Now parents are going to need to remember to pack straws with all the other stuff they carry around.
If they really cared they would close down all Legolands and Lego, Inc. Immediately...and then report to the nearest disintegration chamber.
After all of the sturm and drang to remove paper towel dispensers out of restrooms to switch to air blowers to dry our hands ...
NOW ...
Apparently air blowing your hands is worse and they are removing the dryers and paper towels are back.
Simple. If I can’t have a straw, I won’t buy the drink.
Do you know what straws were made of in in the 19th century? Pasta. I’m certain that biodegradable pasta straws could be made with current technologies.
CC
Is it true that the restrooms there are built like a plastic brick shedhouse?
I work at a public elementary school and they have banned straws for the milk that the kids buy. They are still allowed to bring in their own straws for the juice boxes, for now.......
A recent episode of Shark Tank featured a Woke couple pushing a collapsible stainless steel straw. Retail $29.95
Insane.
I’m so sick of the virtue signaling. Last summer, my wife and I did a 14 mile hike on the beach in Michigan. saw some trash, some stuff that clearly washed away in storms and not one plastic straw. Not one.
I once told a waitress that I not only won’t buy the drink, I’m getting up and walking out.
And that's fine. I'm not opposed to a quality straw that happens to be biodegradable. At least provide this as an option instead of no straws at all.
Damn. It just occurred to me that when Obama was president, I could have applied for billions of dollars in "green tech" government subsidies to start a pasta straw business.
Step on a plastic straw vs. step on a plastic lego.
Strange you don’t hear about plastic lids. I guess that ban comes next year.
Legos continue to wash up on beach.
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28367198
I get your point. The consumer wants straws and lids so they don’t spill Dr. Pepper all over their $40,000 SUV. Either the fast food/ restaurants provide what the customer wants or they won’t be a customer much longer.
CC
great point!
Don’t we have better things to worry about? Like the Chinese and Russians nuking up?
I live on the coast and I sure don’t want to see Red Dawn.
When I was a kid straws were made of paper.
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