Or even the context. A coffee shop in my neighborhood started keeping straws behind the counter, so that you have to ask for them.
And yet, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that there's less plastic in a straw than in a disposable coffee cup, let alone the doubled cups that they serve the coffee in in lieu of using those paper sleeves. Certainly after they've stuck one of those plastic sippy lids on top of the whole affair. If they're worried about their waste stream, that's the place to start.
Many will have paper straws as substitutes, but I’m very skeptical they did a study regarding cradle-to-grave impact of the substitution. Maybe they are net positive (results wise), but I doubt they looked at numbers and said, yes, clearly paper straws are less impactful.
I imagine it's similar to the grocery bag situation. Reusable cotton canvas bags keep plastic out of the environment, but their production emits thousands of times more CO2 per bag than disposable plastic bags. If you buy groceries once a week, you basically have to use the cotton canvas bags the rest of your life to even have a chance at breaking even, everything's a trade-off.
My favorites are made of nylon. It's a much lighter material than what most stores are selling as reusable bags. Enough so that you can easily keep 1 or 2 with you all the time if you're the kind of person to carry a purse or courier bag. Meaning that, unlike those canvas bags or the ones made out of that big heavy stiff plastic material, they're convenient enough to actually get used regularly.
I found one study that suggested, though, that the lowest environmental load came from the regular disposable bags as long as you reuse them until they wear out. The main reason I don't do that is that I've discovered that supermarket employees seem to really hate that, in a way they don't with the bags that are made for reuse.
I'm also inclined to guess that it's still bikeshedding. The shopping bag is really visible, but it's maybe a small amount of waste compared to all the unnecessary packaging for the products it's being used to carry home.
Maybe because the normal unused plastic bags are in that sheet you can just peel one off and it is easily opened up thanks to the design of the plastic bag holder. While if I was recycling them they are probably a wadded bundle inside another plastic bag.
I am not surprised to learn that people who have thought about the issue for more than 2 minutes have come up with a better solution than a low effort HN comment.
And yet, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that there's less plastic in a straw than in a disposable coffee cup, let alone the doubled cups that they serve the coffee in in lieu of using those paper sleeves. Certainly after they've stuck one of those plastic sippy lids on top of the whole affair. If they're worried about their waste stream, that's the place to start.