President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday aimed at rolling back the federal push for the use of paper straws over plastic ones.
“We’re going back to plastic straws,” Trump said when signing the order, claiming that paper straws simply “don’t work.”
“On occasion, [paper straws] break. They explode. If something’s hot, they don’t last very long — like a matter of minutes, sometimes a matter of seconds. It’s a ridiculous situation so we’re going back to plastic straws,” he added. (Paper straws are not known to explode.)
Trump has disliked what he refers to as “liberal paper straws” since at least 2019, when he launched his own brand of plastic straws.
“I do think we have bigger problems than plastic straws,” Trump said in 2019. “You have a little straw, but what about the plates, the wrappers and everything else that are much bigger and they’re made of the same material?”
Trump’s order reverses former President Joe Biden’s administration’s effort to completely phase out single-use plastic, including plastic straws, in federal operations by 2035. The move fell in line with Biden’s executive order on Catalyzing Clean Energy Industries and Jobs through Federal Sustainability.
The United Nations Environment Program estimates that humans produce 430 million metric tons of plastic per year — and just 9% of that is successfully recycled. What’s more is that plastic, unlike paper, can take centuries to decompose.
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“Plastic pollution can alter habitats and natural processes, reducing ecosystems’ ability to adapt to climate change, directly affecting millions of people’s livelihoods, food production capabilities and social well-being,” a page on the UNEP website states.
Christy Leavitt, the plastics campaign director for environmental organization Oceana, told US News that Trump is “moving in the wrong direction on single-use plastics.”
“The world is facing a plastic pollution crisis, and we can no longer ignore one of the biggest environmental threats facing our oceans and our planet today,” she said.