Students. Students make them that way. It’s no coincidence that most older teachers feel like they’ve checked out.

I did substitute teaching for about two years. I got to see a lot of my old teachers, Some classes were wonderful, a true joy to teach. Others, not so much. I can understand why some people, as you say, mentally check out. It’s a coping mechanism. They were not all the same people I remember. Maybe part of growing older. Maybe part of years of difficult students sucking out all the joy of teaching they had in them

I just love how you think I’m presuming too much, only to in the very next sentence assume I think removing plastic straws being the end of the road and final solution.

And since I according to you, presume too much, did you want me to spend less energy on, literally, making straw-men (plural), like, scare-crows? Or did you mean that I should spend less energy on figuratively, straw-manning.

I would assume the latter but you are, literally, formulating the former. Either way. I’m not doing either of those things.

Ah yes, the good old, “It’s not the #1 problem so why bother doing anything”. It’s that wonderful kind of attitude that simply doesn’t get anything done, ever. Because there’s always a bigger problem.

The only ones focusing on one thing like plastic straws, are people like you. The rest of us moved on

I’m not ignoring anything. But if you want me to cover every single issue and aspect of various types of trash management, it’s gonna be a god damn university essay, I don’t even think lemmy would allow so many characters in a comment.

Peoples “unmindfulness” is responsible for every single piece of garbage you see around you. When I walk down the road and see a bag of crisps laying around. That’s because a person just tossed it. And no. I’m not ignoring corporate waste or pollution, criminal or otherwise. But that isn’t the topic right now.

This specific post was making fun of the straw bans vs other single use plastics that are seemingly fine. straws vs pipets used in labs. And what I said was that pipets are not being littered around every corner of the globe. But straws are. That’s why movements to ban such implements are ongoing. That’s why we have movements to ban single use plastics like straws and cutlery, while a plastic shampoo bottle is still “fair game” since they’re not typically just tossed in nature.

That doesn’t mean I’m just ignoring everything else. We also didn’t talk about how armed robberies are bad. But I can assure you, I’m not ignoring them, they’re just not the topic at hand.

And observations of landfills or unrecycled stockpiles doesn’t vary by location?

The idea was to try and remove plastic waste that people tend to just throw away without thinking much of it. Lab students don’t exactly take pipets with them and throw away in a ditch. But unfortunately, way too many people just throw away single use plastics like straws, cutlery, cups, “paper plates”, etc.

All you need to do is walk on the side of a busy road and look in the ditch to see what people just throw away.

It’s not a lot of shampoo bottles, but tons of plastic cups and accompanied straws.