Most recently, straws have been getting their fair share from the plastic-hate. Lonely Whale's celebrity-clad anti-straw campaign caused a big stir, causing a lot of people to #stopsucking and big corporations like Starbucks pledging to stop giving out plastic straws. Even Her Majesty The Queen banned plastic straws from all Royal Estates.

At first glance, these seem like improvements but how effective is it to declare war on a material?

It’s not that what these campaigns are claiming is false: in the way they are currently produced plastic straws and bags are indeed a threat to the environment, but not as big a threat that we imagine them to be. In Doing Good Better, William MacAskill argues that, on generous estimates, if one were to cut plastic bags from their life forever, they would only tackle 0.4 % of their carbon emissions. Similarly, plastic straws only account for 0.03% of all plastic waste in our oceans.