My latest Mommy-hobby has been to hoard plastic straws, which very soon may be banned. I think it’s important to reduce waste, but the alternatives to plastic straws don’t work when you have kids. Metal straws are too hard and pointy, and cardboard straws turn into soggy pulp when young teeth chew on them. So I’m stuck with plastic until my son can drink from a cup without spilling it all.

The movement to ban plastic-straws is the latest example of virtue signaling by climate activists. You ban the creature comforts of hard-working middle-class moms, and ignore the private jet/super yacht of your celebrity patrons.

This virtue signaling reminds me of a Wall Street Journal video I watched about how Chinese toy factories are coping with American tariffs. The video showed the assembly line at Eastcolight, a factory in Guangdong, China that manufactures toy microscopes. In response to tariffs, the factory had two choices: Increase prices or reduce quality. The factory manager explains that they decided on the latter: Instead of metal, they changed to a plastic base for the microscopes. Instead of glass, they now use plastic lenses. And the design was simplified to use fewer screws. All ways of reducing quality to cut down costs that otherwise have would have increased the price from $70 to $90.

An Amazon review of the product described it as “one of the most disappointing purchases I have ever made” and complained that none of the advertised features (like 900x zoom) worked.

I wonder, what will happen to those cheap plastic microscopes once they’re tossed in the garbage bin by disappointed users? What landfill will it clog? What ocean will it pollute?

It’s this type of waste that I wish climate activists would focus on. Cheap, flimsy, low-quality junk. Instead of banning plastic straws, maybe they can keep bigger junk out of the garbage.