On plastic straws and lollipop sticks

I'm going for a walk twice a week at the moment, mostly around Oakley Creek and the neighbouring streets and shared path.  As I walk, I pick up rubbish: I ignore things that will biodegrade reasonably quickly, but gather most of the plastic, metal and glass that I see.

I have noticed that I seem to pick up similar numbers of plastic straws and plastic lollipop sticks.  These seem similar to me in terms of environmental harm: if a straw can get stuck in a turtle's nostril, surely so can a lollipop stick?  So why do I see frequent calls for a straw ban (and bans already enacted in many places overseas), yet never a call for a plastic lollipop stick ban?

What can we do about microplastic in the ocean?

You have probably heard about the problem of microplastic in the ocean: tiny pieces of plastic, too small to see, that sea creatures mistake for plankton.  They eat it, filling their stomachs with inert bulk, starve and die.  There is little evidence that this microplastic concentrates up the food chain (and the only time you're likely to personally eat it is whilst eating shellfish), but killing off a swathe of the bottom of the food chain still is surely unhealthy for the ecosystem as a whole.  It is also pretty disrespectful to the God who made the oceans.

What can we do about this?

Later I give my reasons in some detail, but, in brief, I have come to think that the most effective things we in the West can do are:

1. Drive less and always drive with well-inflated tyres and well-balanced wheels;
2. Avoid wearing petroleum-based synthetic textiles such as polyester and poly cotton blends (and wash those we do wear less often).

We can also work towards change in areas we don't affect directly:

1. Support charities that improve rubbish collection in the majority world and lobby aid donors such as NZAID to do the same;
2. Lobby councils and the Ministry of Transport to install road surfaces that are less eroding of tyres;
3. Lobby local councils to collect storm water and remove as much of the microplastic found there as possible.

Any one of these would have far more impact than bans on plastic microbeads, which are a negligible source of microplastics.

On the other, supporting bans on plastic bags may well be useful: I suspect that such light, easily-blown-away plastic items are likely to make up a significant part of the plastic not landfilled or recycled in NZ.  Participating in beach cleanups will also help prevent some of the items that didn't make it to a bin from entering the ocean.