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President Donald Trump has just announced he is banning the federal mandate of producing paper straws throughout the US. In-fact, he wants the nation to move exclusively back to plastic.
‘Drill baby drill’ was just the tip of the iceberg re Trump’s ecological unravelling, it would seem.
The newly inaugurated president is still going down his list of pet peeves, binning off federal orders and drafting new ones as they pop into his brain. The latest target in the crosshairs of the proud climate changer denier is the paper straw.
In toddler tantrum-like fashion, Trump scowled that paper straws ‘don’t work’ in an official statement on Monday before confirming his intention to have the US move back to exclusively plastic.
‘It’s a ridiculous situation. We’re going back to plastic straws,’ he lamented – presumably after losing a paper straw to a Chuck E. Cheese milkshake… the last straw.
Trump’s new decree orders federal agencies to stop buying paper straws and ‘otherwise ensure that paper straws are no longer provided within agency buildings.’ You wouldn’t want a felony on your record now, would you mister caterer?
This decision, though extremely disappointing, isn’t exactly surprising. Trump’s loathing of paper straws has been publicly known for years, emphasised by the branded plastic straws flogged for $15 during his 2019 election campaign.
His adversary at the time, Joe Biden, set in place a plan to phase out federal purchases of single-use plastics from packaging and events by 2027 and all operations by 2035. Two years from the preliminary target, however, a reinvigorated Trump has declared his predecessor’s policy ‘DEAD!’ in a social media post over the weekend.
Despite the fact that the equivalent of a garbage truck’s worth of plastic waste is dumped in the ocean every minute, harming biodiversity and creating microplastics that have found their way into human blood and our testicles, Trump skirted the issue (or crisis, if you prefer) with a bemusing attempt at placation.
