Plastic Straws and Plastic Netting:

Failing to Acknowledge the Disabled and the Indigenous

In his conclusion of “Green Dots, Pink Hearts: Displacing Politics from the Malaysian Rain Forest,” Peter Brosius points out the dangers of eco-imperialism in global debates on environmentalism. He brings up the very important questions that are oftentimes missed when large institutional powers take it upon themselves to act on the environment as quickly as they can: “Who is listened to, ignored, or regarded as disruptive, and in which contexts? Who is it useful to be engaged with and who is it necessary to establish distance from?” (Brosius, 1993). When one thinks about current environmental crises and their stories, there are often some seemingly “obvious” instances of certain minority groups being ignored. Far too often, for example, are Indigenous lands and rights blatantly infringed upon both — usually on opposite ends of the spectrum — in the name of monetary advancement and the name of environmental advancement. In many incidents, however, the exclusion of marginalized voices may not seem as “obvious” as they are excluded from movements with massive, overwhelming public support. In particular I would like to highlight how the U.S. plastic straw ban movement largely ignores and leaves behind people with disabilities. I do not write this to claim that this issue takes precedent or must be focused on more than the issues facing Indigenous peoples and their lands. On the contrary, I wish to connect the two to provide insight into the interconnectedness of environmental issues and discuss how national and corporate interests have prioritized their own desires over those of any marginalized group that lacks political — and social — power.

Over the past four years or so, a movement in the United States has rapidly been gaining traction and hopes to ban the use of plastic straws from public consumption. The movement has not gained traction without good reason. Every year as climate change worsens, people become eager to find ways they can reduce their carbon footprint and reduce their personal pollution and waste. Because of this continuing “desire for meaningful environmental change and a viral video of a sea turtle with a plastic straw stuck in its nose,” (Joseph, 2018) plastic straw bans have been praised as an important step in the fight for the removal of plastic pollution in our oceans. Disability rights advocates, however, are not so sure about the supposed positive outcomes of this movement.

Disability rights advocates importantly point out that plastic straws “were originally invented as a disability aid” and “are an inexpensive, temperature-resistant, sturdy, and sanitary alternative to the reusable silicone feeding tubes which were in heavy rotation before their advent” (Joseph, 2018). Plastic straws have long been essential in helping those with disabilities safely perform what should be the simple acts of eating or drinking. An easy response to this critique of the anti-plastic straw movement is to bring up the many plastic straw alternatives that exist, but disability rights advocates further state that “ all current substitutes fail to meet the same standard of universal design” (Joseph, 2018). Compostable alternatives, such as paper straws, fall apart very quickly and are easy to chew through or choke on for users with limited or uncontrollable jaw movements while reusable alternatives are oftentimes very hard to clean, get very hot or cold easily, or are too physically rough for users with fragile jaws or teeth. All of these alternatives combined also oftentimes present more possible allergens that are simply nonexistent in plastic straws (Joseph, 2018). With so many valid concerns with the anti-plastic straw movement, one has to wonder how and why such concerns go largely avoided in the common, day-to-day discussions surrounding the use of plastic straws. Is the exclusion of these voices incidental? Or do certain interests simply take priority over others in the public eye?

The conflict here does not seem to stem from anti-plastic straw advocates necessarily trying to ignore the voices of people with disabilities. While certainly there may be some activists in this movement who do not care for the concerns of people with disabilities, many activists for the plastic straw ban have made valid attempts to address and accommodate for the challenge of avoiding making the lives of disabled people harder. A major advocacy group of the plastic straw ban, called Lonely Whale, “have acknowledged in multiple interviews that straw bans present potential problems for people with disabilities” and provide resources that “clearly outline the need for acknowledging the complex issue straw bans present to disability rights” (Joseph, 2018). In a way, many activists for the plastic straw ban who may genuinely want to include disabled people in the discourse may be seen as victims to the rhetoric and goals of legislators and corporations. This, of course, is when eco-imperialism comes into play.

While all this debate about whether or not disabled voices should be paid attention to goes on surrounding the plastic straw issue, a question that strangely gets ignored is whether or not a plastic straw ban would really improve the environment all that much. The data does not really make the plastic straw ban seem all that important. A report from Better Alternatives Now says that plastic straws and stirrers make up about 7% of plastic found along the California coastline when measured by piece, but Jambeck Research Group says that — when measured by weight — plastic straws really only make up 0.03% of ocean plastic in general (Joseph, 2018). A 0.03% decrease in ocean plastic weight hardly seems like a good reason to make the lives of disabled people harder. As a matter of fact, a survey by a group called Ocean Cleanup found that about 47% of ocean plastic is specifically comprised of discarded/lost commercial fishing netting. So why did this plastic straw movement get so big while a movement against, say, the fishing industry has not gained nearly the same popularity or success?

Again, in his conclusion, Brosius refers to the concept that Rappaport called “institutional deafness”: ‘the unwillingness or inability of authorities to understand messages encoded in terms other than those of the dominant economic discourse’” (Brosius, 1993). In a similar narrative as the one Brosius described about Malaysia’s forestry debacles, the plastic straw movement began — and in many ways still runs — as a deeply moral movement attempting to appeal to peoples better natures. This has worked to change individuals’ personal plastic use choices, but it’s certainly not the reason corporations like Starbucks have decided to stop using plastic straws. If it were, then corporations would surely be encouraged to lower all plastic use, perhaps to take a stand against the fishing industry or eliminate plastic use altogether. Instead, as Brosius brings up, these corporations only respond to the “dominant economic discourse.” As the anti-plastic straw movement has grown stronger and stronger, the removal of plastic straws from a business is more a symbolic change to attract more consumers than a moral bid to save the planet. After all, Starbucks decided to replace its plastic straws with differently designed plastic tops for their cups, simply changing their form of plastic use rather than making an actual attempt to lower plastic use. Despite this meaningless change, environmentalist organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund have given Starbucks huge praise for their actions. Ultimately, many of these groups and companies are saying they care more about their popularity and profits than they do for the protection of the environment or for the ability of people with disabilities to live normally and equally. Corporations are not the only ones at fault here, however. There are legislative powers that ignore people with disabilities just as strongly.

According to many disability rights activists, “many businesses accommodate people with disabilities only when required by law” (Joseph, 2018). This means that while the priorities shown by corporations mentioned earlier may very well be somewhat abhorrent, a corporations actions are only as positive or negative as the laws that govern and restrict them. Whereas the previous examples of corporate actions against plastic straws may have been examples of the “unwillingness” aspect of institutional deafness, legislators seem to have exhibited the “inability” aspect as the anti-plastic straw movement has gained traction. Many cities have already passed legislation to ban or severely restrict plastic straw use but have refused to listen to disability rights advocates and their critiques (rarely do they even request no ban at all, instead calling for special accommodations at the very least). In Seattle, “Seattle Public Utilities failed to reach out to the Disability Commission for feedback prior to passing the legislation, and then passed a ban with an exemption that allowed — but did not require — businesses to serve flexible plastic straws to patrons with disabilities” (Joseph, 2018). In San Francisco, again legislation was passed banning straws but only allowed “exemptions for people who need them, rather than mandating that they accommodate people with disabilities” (Joseph, 2018). Worst of all is legislation in Santa Barbara, which “not only prohibits any business or individual from handing out plastic straws … [but] actually punishes repeat offenders with heavy fines and jail time. For providers to get a disability exemption, they must apply to the city of Santa Barbara for an exemption due to ‘medical necessity,’ an extra step that makes it that much harder and more expensive for businesses to serve customers with disabilities” (Joseph, 2018).

From a logical standpoint, it’s hard to understand why these legislators have so blatantly ignored the needs and demands of disabled people. How hard could it be, after all, to simply add a mandate that requires restaurants to keep a small side stash of plastic straws for customers that truly need them? This again returns to the “institutional deafness” that encourages legislators to focus on the “dominant economic discourse” — that is, Capitalism. Brosius points out how his arguments parallel those of James Scott, who explains how states “attempt to make a society legible, to arrange the population in ways that simplified the classic state functions of taxation, conscription, and prevention of rebellion” (Brosius, 1993). He further points out that Capitalism is the strongest tool in creating this simplification as “an agent of ‘homogenization, uniformity, grids, and heroic simplification’” (Brosius, 1993). When movements in the United States seek to make large-scale change on moral grounds on a political level, there is little room made for nuance. This is why it’s so rare for conversation to continue to “why don’t we do something about plastic netting instead?” or “why don’t we make sure we can make life easier for our disabled community?” The root of this institutional deafness from the corporate side of things and the legislative side of things is Capitalism, and it secretly aims to be “institutionally deaf” to more than just the needs of people with disabilities.

In essence, we’ve now shown how the movement against plastic straws has resulted in sort of eco-imperialist, institutionally deaf results that harm the community of people with disabilities within the United States. Action, however, is not the only cause of environmental impacts such as the ones we’ve discussed. It’s also incredibly important to discuss negligent inaction that is ignored due to such heavy focus on such action. As mentioned earlier, plastic straws contribute a miniscule amount of ocean plastic when compared to discarded fishing netting. This netting, as it accounts for 47% of the ocean’s plastic, doesn’t only have all the negative effects inherent of normal plastic pollution. This netting, when neglected, can also be referred to as “ghost gear” as it continues to trap and harm marine life despite never actually being collected as a catch or product (Ettinger, 2018). The damage done to marine life, consequently, is incredibly harmful to coastline indigenous communities that rely on fishing and seafood not only to survive, but also to maintain their culture and belief systems.

One study from Oceans Deeply “found that coastal Indigenous peoples eat nearly four times more seafood per capita than the global average, and about 15 times more per capita than nonindigenous peoples in their countries.” Also, they discovered that this seafood is oftentimes used in “creating important ties between families and individuals and embodying their symbolic ties to the environment” (Ota & Cisneros-Montemayor, 2017). Thus, when neglected “ghost gear” threatens the major food source of these communities, not only is their food security at risk, but so is “their ‘food sovereignty,’ which implies not only having enough food, but being able to choose what you eat” (Ota & Cisneros-Montemayor, 2017). Again, we can apply the concept of institutional deafness on a global scale now as fisheries continue to be irresponsible with their fishing equipment. They see that biodegradable fishing equipment and the proper management of such equipment would be more costly. Corporations and legislators focus their powers on small, easy to solve “problems” like plastic straws rather than tackling issues that would require real substantial attacks on the profits of the fishing industry. These harmed indigenous people, unfortunately, are even less capable of having their voice heard on a global or national scale than the disability advocacy groups from earlier for a few reasons.

The Bajau Laut, for example, “are an Indigenous group dispersed across Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines” (Ota & Cisneros-Montemayor, 2017). They are incredibly reliant on fishing for their sustenance, living in houseboats along the coast. In Malaysia, they are not recognized as a minority ethnic group, so they are considered illegal invaders of Malaysia with no nationality and thus are always in constant danger when moving (despite being nomadic peoples) and are never involved in Malaysian environmental conservation efforts or discussions (Ota & Cisneros-Montemayor, 2017). This is clearly intentional in protecting the status quo of Malaysia’s economy and outside corporate interests in Malaysia. If the Bajau Laut people were included in any capacity in conservation efforts, their goals would understandably be very clear and direct: stop allowing fisheries to both steal and pollute their own sources of sustenance and culture. This, now, is when we can tie our two “stories” together to some questions posed by Brosius at the beginning of this paper: “Who is listened to, ignored, or regarded as disruptive, and in which contexts?” (Brosius, 1993)

Oftentimes, we’re made to think that the solution to creating environmental change is to have our voices loudly heard. The two environmental issues I’ve presented here — that of plastic straws and fish netting — shows that change may not come that simply. The forces that utilize eco-imperialism to the detriment of marginalized communities will always do so with any strategy it can. It’s possible to “listen” to one community (the disabled) while finding ways to avoid its demands just as it’s perhaps easier to ignore other communities (indigenous peoples) that have been given no platform to properly project their demands in the first place. The strategies behind these two forms of eco-imperialism are vastly different in both effect and complexity, but they both must be understood if marginalized groups wish to fight against them.

First to be analyzed should be the more simple and straightforward eco-imperialist strategy: ignoring and removing marginalized groups from any discourse or conversation. Admittedly, this strategy seems to be becoming naturally more difficult on its own as the internet becomes more and more globally dominant and information is more easily spread. There are, however, still communities left in the margins and institutions with the power to keep them there. This strategy tends to be more direct as a straightforward use of institutional power rather than a game of rhetoric shifting and discourse. Nancy Lee Peluso speaks on this kind of eco-imperialism in “Coercing Conversation? The Politics of State Resource Control.” She goes into great detail on two case studies about Java and Kenya in which “the means of violence … originate in the institutions of social control already dominating civil society, and are applied to the control of natural resources by and for the state” (Peluso, 1993). This is made further unsettling by the support of wealthy conservationist institutions like the World Bank in using military forces to propagate the cause of conservationism (Peluso, 1993). These conservationist groups seem to perhaps honestly believe that they can use military groups and violent threats to the advantage of conservationism (which is already a horrible environmentally unjust idea), but the reality is that the cause of conservationism can also easily be utilized for political and military desires. Unfortunately, the only thing marginalized groups with little to no political influence can do against such violent forces is band together to fight back and hope that international media notices. Otherwise, it’s up to those with privilege in their countries to hold their powers accountable, ensuring that any conservation action or plan “seriously consider[s] how local people will tangibly and immediately benefit from conservation activities” rather than ensuring “the escalation of violence around valuable resource territories” (Peluso, 1993).

The next eco-imperialist strategy to be analyzed is a bit more complex: a state’s ability to “listen” to a marginalized group while subtly shifting rhetoric in a way that makes the marginalized group’s demands seem less and less reasonable. This is done in a variety of ways that I’ve already discussed in this paper. I’ve been discussing this as disability rights activists have attempted to fight the plastic straw ban nationwide. It is, of course, commendable that they have been open to cooperation, allowing plastic straw bans to happen but requesting mandated exceptions (which still are rarely if ever granted). However, this is precisely how the shifting of rhetoric has negatively impacted their efforts.

Kim Sauder, a PhD student in Disability Studies and a notable disability rights activist, points out that people aren’t, or shouldn’t, be made to make a choice between accessibility and conservation. More than that, she makes the point that the choice really is a false one as the plastic straw ban is not anywhere near conservationists’ main environmental concerns. She says, “That legitimizes the idea that a straw ban will achieve something. It ignores the reality that a straw ban won’t do what legislators say it will. The ‘conversation’ they are starting really boils down to what people will accept as success and the harms they will justify in the name of that” (Joseph, 2018). When activists, corporations, and legislators are able to shift the decision from one of “plastic straws vs. plastic nets” to “plastic straws vs. disabled people,” it becomes easy to place the burden on the people and ask them to figure out their own solution. Besides this being an affront to the very concept of environmental justice, it completely shifts burden from people with the most power to lessen damage to the environment in tangible ways to people who are simply trying to survive. Marginalized groups must combat this by turning the rhetoric right back around on their eco-imperialist oppressors while seeking support from other marginalized groups rather than seeking support from the very enemy they’re fighting against.

This shifting of rhetoric to throw aside the heard demands of marginalized groups was also the crux of Brosius’ writing on eco-imperialism. In his writing, he told the story of a campaign against Malaysian forestry largely held in defense of indigenous groups in Malaysia, along with certain indigenous figures of Malaysia taking center stage. The prime minister of Malaysia, however, shifted that fight in two ways. First, he attacked the hypocrisy of Northern environmentalists as they fought against Malaysia’s environmental practices while failing to attack their own negative practices. Second, he created the idea of sustainable forestry and attempted to turn this “sustainable forestry” into some sort of science (Brosius, 1993). This is how, as discussed earlier, institutional powers with their institutional deafness are able to shift debates and complaints levied against them from one of moral backlash to one of scientific reasoning. This shift is most important for marginalized activist groups to notice and call out as these institutions know they could never have a moral high ground versus grassroots “underdog” movements.

As noted earlier, for a corporation to truly claim any sort of moral high ground, they’d have to make a legitimate effort to cut down plastic use in every aspect of their business model. Legislators would have to proactively take marginalized groups into account when passing laws. State powers would have to grant their marginalized groups institutional power and rights that directly will challenge the interests of the state. When these powers, instead, shift to an “objective scientific” view, they suddenly have the power of funding and academia on their side. When common people see wealthy environmentalist organizations celebrating Starbucks using the same amount of plastic as before, they are encouraged to trust those organizations at face-value and wonder why the marginalized group can’t simply do more. When Malaysia introduces sustainable forestry, people wonder why anti-foresting activists can’t appreciate their efforts to do less bad.

Everything I’ve spoken about and touched on stems from a major systematic issue: the tendency for marginalized groups to be left out of social and civil decision making before these problems even arise. Oftentimes, people assume it’s because these marginalized groups have no interest in participating, or perhaps are just interested in survival rather than active change. This, however, is untrue. Dorceta E. Taylor shows this in “The Evolution of Environmental Justice Activism, Research, and Scholarship,” stating that “despite the growth in the environmental justice movement, the growing participation of minorities in environmental affairs, and the desire of minorities to work in the field, studies find that the environmental workforce still lacks diversity” (Taylor, 2011). The interest and desire are there, as are the numbers. These marginalized groups need to continue to both force themselves into and position themselves against the academic spaces and positions of power and influence that propagate eco-imperialist attempts to shift narratives in their favor. This isn’t necessarily to say that such institutions can do no good. However, the reality remains that these institutions will always have some implicit power and control over grassroots movements, especially those run by marginalized groups. If institutions don’t want the people they regularly oppress to forcibly dismantle them, then they would be wise to let go of some of their likely purposeful deafness.

Works Cited

Brosius, P. (1993, March). Green Dots, Pink Hearts: Displacing Politics from the Malaysian Rain Forest. American Anthropologist, 101(1), 36–57.

Ettinger, J. (2018, August 9). 50% OF OCEAN PLASTIC IS FISHING NETS, NOT STRAWS. Retrieved from livekindly.co: https://www.livekindly.co/fishing-nets-not-plastic-straws-make-up-nearly-half-of-ocean-plastic-pollution/

Joseph, R. (2018, August 6). Straw Ban Or Straw Man? Why Plastic Straw Bans Aren’t The Answer. Retrieved from sprudge.com: https://sprudge.com/straw-ban-or-straw-man-why-plastic-straw-bans-arent-the-answer-135315.html

Nadasdy, P. (2005). Transcending the Debate over the Ecologically Noble Indian: Indigenous Peoples and Environmentalism. Ethnohistory, 291–331.

Ota, Y., & Cisneros-Montemayor, A. (2017, July 4). For Indigenous Communities, Fish Mean Much More Than Food. Retrieved from News Deeply — Oceans Deeply: https://www.newsdeeply.com/oceans/articles/2017/07/04/for-indigenous-communities-fish-mean-much-more-than-food

Peluso, N. L. (1993, June). Coercing Conversation? The Politics of State Resource Control. Global Environmental Change: Human and Policy Dimensions, 3(2), pp. 199–217.

Sahlins, M. (1972). Stone Age Economics. Chicago: Aldine Atherton Inc.

Smith, E. A., & Wishnie, M. (2000). Conservation and Subsistence in Small-Scale Societies. Annual Review of Anthropology, 493–524.

Taylor, D. E. (2011, December). The Evolution of Environmental Justice Activism, Research, and Scholarship. Environmental Practice, 13(4), pp. 280–301.