Bend on straws

Leave it to San Francisco to find the place where a good idea starts sucking. The city’s proposed drinking straw ban has worthy goals, but for those who haven’t found a suitable alternative, the glass looks half-empty.

The Board of Supervisors is considering joining Seattle, Starbucks and other cities and businesses cracking down on single-use straws, which are replacing plastic bags as the garbage lefties love to trash. Advocates note that straws are ubiquitous, mostly unnecessary, and resistant to recycling, making them a ready target for reducing the plastic polluting beaches and oceans.

The stern straw ban being considered in San Francisco, however, could endanger scores of tea shops that are uniquely dependent on wide-gauge, tapiocacapable straws. Sure, as a cause, hawking bubble tea lacks the gravitas of saving sea turtles. But the supervisors should find a way to avoid putting a whole sector out of business in the name of incrementally reducing pollution.

Straws are, moreover, particularly important to people with certain disabilities, a number of whom have taken issue with the growing enthusiasm for eliminating every last straw. While paper, compostable, reusable and other alternatives are available, the utility of a flexible plastic straw is difficult to match.

Such unforeseen consequences underscore the wisdom of guiding rather than dictating consumer choices. A new law in the city of Davis, for example, allows restaurants to dispense straws only upon request, which discourages waste while preserving the option.

Especially in light of the relatively modest share of overall plastic pollution attributable to straws, the case for denying them to businesses and people who can’t do without them seems as flimsy and hollow as a disposable drinking device.