probably it's good to have plastic everywhere if it decreases environmental damage

the hsu analysis is wrong because it's omitting the energy consumed by growing the trees; it rates "craft paper" as 12.6 kJ/g, but according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#In_chemical_rea... burning wood produces 18 MJ/kg = 18 kJ/g, which is to say, more energy than that is still available in the end product, without even taking into account the "embodied" energy dissipated in processing

the energy consumed by the tree in growing is about 20× larger than this, 300–400 kJ per gram of wood, which is close to 700 kJ per gram of paper, because about half the tree is lignin, which is digested in the papermaking process and then discharged into waterways

it does give a reasonably plausible (if misleadingly precise) figure of 95.4 kJ/g for the polypropylene straws

also, it incorrectly compares 200-mg polypropylene straws against 200-mg paper straws. but paper straws are, as everyone knows, enormously thicker than polypropylene straws of the same level of durability; even with the accounting error of omitting the embodied energy of the paper, its conclusion presupposes the opposite of my premise above, which you should have mentioned in your comment (but presumably could not because you had not actually read the study you were citing)

in fact, a typical 6-mm-diameter paper straw made from 330 gsm paper at a length of 200 mm weighs some 1250 mg, roughly 6× as much as the hsu study's 200-mg estimate. a 200-mg paper straw would be 53 gsm; that's like tracing paper. it would collapse immediately if you tried to suck on it

finally, it is not correct that hundreds of billions of plastic straws are thrown away per year, and those that end up in landfills (which is the vast majority) are not a problem at all. nor are they a few % of the total, as you say, but 100× less than that; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_straw#Environmental_i... says, 'In total, they are less than 0.022% of plastic waste emitted to oceans.'

I’m not surprised you replied in less time than it takes to read the first paragraph. The study is about embedded energy, so yes one assumes it does account for energy used growing trees (remember the solar energy they use is free), unless you have evidence to the contrary?

I can’t even start understanding that logic. The whole reason we’re having this discussion is that we know the environment, especially marine life, is being ravaged by plastic waste.

i have added my calculations to the contrary to the comment above, perhaps after you wrote your comment, so you can see that i had somehow come to the correct conclusions before reading the first paragraph

consider the possibility that this is because i have previous knowledge of the area instead of just pasting the first link google throws at me, so my opinions are based on domain knowledge instead of the kind of common sense that tells you the world is flat

if solar energy is free then why do we care about embodied energy

we do not know that the environment, especially marine life, is being 'ravaged' by plastic waste. it is being ravaged by clear-cutting (including for papermaking), by industrial waste effluents (including from papermaking), by agricultural waste effluents, by global warming, by ocean acidification, by habitat destruction from farming (including tree farming), by overfishing, by desertification, and by dumping of toxic waste

there is clearly a problem with plastic waste due to poor waste disposal practices in a few countries (mostly indonesia and the philippines) but in the overall scheme of environmental devastation, it is comparatively small, and plastic straws are an utterly insignificant part of that comparatively small problem

The Wikipedia article you linked to says a marketing firm estimated daily usage of plastic straws in the US at 390M, not much lower than the kid's estimate. The estimate for Europe is 25 billion/year, according to other sources that are also not a 9-year old.

Why are you surprised solar energy is free? We're talking about trees. It's not accounting for the energy consumed in the creation of crude oil either, I'm sure you already know that "embedded energy" refers to extraction + transportation + manufacture, not the mass of the materials.

Straws are especially harmful to animals as it already comes in an easily 'consumable' size, even before it starts degrading. They are nearly always single-use and thrown away at a rate higher than any other plastic product. Research keeps popping up pointing to plastic as a contributor to the death of coral reefs, damage to sea life, and we have no idea about the actual impact of microplastics now found embedded in the tissues of every living being.

I still cannot understand what type of argument you're trying to make. Having plastic everywhere is obviously not good for the environment even if paper ones take more resources. Paper is renewable and biodegradable, oil/plastic is not, and we still have several orders of magnitude more energy available.