Me To Restaurants: “No Straws Please”

In March 2016 I planned to order stainless steel straws for when my husband and I go out for shakes, see Reducing Use of Plastic Disposable Straws Good for the Environment.Unfortunately, I didn’t get them ordered until very recently. We now have four in our car, four at home.

Recent straw bans prompted me to finally order reusable straws.

Several countries, in the name of combating plastic pollution in the ocean, have begun banning various plastic products: utensils, bottles, and bags that often get thrown away after one use. In the United States, these efforts have centered on the plastic straw.

On July 26, the Walt Disney Company announced that it would eliminate single-use plastic straws and stirrers in all its locations by mid-2019 as part of its “journey of environmental stewardship.” Disney also plans to reduce other plastic products in its hotels and cruise ships as well as plastic shopping bags and styrofoam cups.

Starbucks made a similar announcement earlier this month, saying it would transition to a new lid for cold drinks that many have likened to an “adult sippy cup.”

The company has said it will introduce these lids in Seattle and Vancouver this fall, and continue with the rollout in the US and Canada next year, with the goal of taking them global. Eventually, this will mean eliminating more than 1 billion plastic straws per year.

Seattle, the home of the mega coffee company, became the first major US city with a plastic straw ban on July 1. New York City has proposed legislation to ban plastic straws in the city by 2020. Malibu and San Luis Obispo, California, and Miami Beach and Fort Myers, Florida, have similar efforts in the works.

There’s also a trending hashtag, #StopSucking. Chelsea Clinton, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Russell Crowe, Tom Brady, Sonam Kapoor, and Tom Felton have all pledged to “just say no” when handed a plastic straw. (VOX)

Why straw bans all of a sudden?

When reality-TV star Kim Kardashian West told her 115 million Instagram followers that her household had stopped using plastic straws, the head of an environmental nonprofit responded in disbelief.

“I thought, ‘Did we culture-hack this?’ ” said Dune Ives, executive director of Lonely Whale, whose #StopSucking social-media campaign advocates banning single-use plastic straws. “Did we change the conversation around straws?”

This is the summer of the plastic-straw ban. Bans on straws have swept through U.S. cities, businesses, restaurants and even sports venues at a surprising speed. In recent months, officials in cities including New York, San Francisco, Miami Beach, Fla., Santa Barbara, Calif., and Portland, Ore., have either proposed or passed bans on single-use plastic straws. Last month, Seattle became the first major U.S. city to put a ban into effect. (Wall Street Journal)

The above article goes on to talk about how going up straws gives some “moral licensing”, they’ve done their part so they can do other things that are bad for the environment. I personally am always trying to reduce waste. reduce using plastics. reusing things as many times as possible. My indoor compost bin was a failure, but my kitchen scrap stock has been great. My homemade laundry detergent works great, but dishwasher detergent not so much — switched to Costco pods earlier this year. In the 30+ years since I moved out of my parent’s house I’ve bought maybe 1-2 rolls of paper towels. Not 1-2 rolls per year, 1-2 rolls in 3 decades!

I want to do more — consume less. I want to make sure I’m sending evrything to recycling that I can. I want to make sure I’m sending stuff to recycling in a way it’ll get provided — not rejected and sent to a landfill.

At restaurants I’m thinking I need to bring our own cloth napkins. I rarely eat out at places that use plastic flatware, but bringing my own flatware wouldn’t be that difficult. Reducing items we consume…consumes an increasing amount of my brain’s time. Saturday night we wet out to eat and I remembered to tell the person who took our drink order “no straws.” I have to get ahead off them because once it comes to the table it is waste whether I use it or not.

My hope is local restaurants will cease bringing water to the table with a straw before giving me the chance to tell them we don’t need straws.

— Steve Patterson

Sunday Poll: What Impact Will The PGA Championship Have On Our Regional Economy?

With the exception of Tuesday’s primary the news last week was dominated by the 100th PGA Championship held at Bellerive Country Club in suburban St. Louis County.

I’m not a golf fan, so my thoughts turned to economics:

The 100th PGA Championship Aug. 9-12 is expected to have an economic impact felt well beyond Bellerive Country Club’s picturesque course, up to $100 million, according to some estimates.

Hotels are filling up downtown, nearly 20 miles from the course that’s situated in a mostly residential area with few hotels nearby. (Post-Dispatch)

For today’s poll I’d like you to think about the economic impact on the regional economy.

This poll will close at 8pm tonight.

— Steve Patterson

Thoughts on Tuesday’s Primary

Today you get my thoughts on Tuesday’s election, starting in…Ohio’s special election to fill a vacant U.S. House seat. As you’ve likely heard, Ohio’s 12th District has been in GOP hands for decades. Trump won big in the district. Yet, GOP nominee Balderson is barely leading.

Election officials in Franklin County found 588 previously uncounted votes in a Columbus suburb. The result: O’Connor had a net gain of 190 votes, bringing the race’s margin down to 1,564.

“The votes from a portion of one voting location had not been processed into the tabulation system,” according to a Franklin County Board of Elections news release.

Balderson declared victory Tuesday night in the closely watched congressional district race in central Ohio. But O’Connor says he’s waiting for all votes to be counted. 

That includes 3,435 provisional ballots and 5,048 absentee ballots, which will be tabulated by Aug. 24.  (USA Today)

Interestingly, regardless of who is declared the winner these same two will face off again in November. Tuesday’s special election was to finish the term into January 2019. One may win now, but lose in November. The seat may stay in GOP hands, but it’s significant the race is so close. However, I don’t think this signals a nationwide “blue wave”, as each house district has unique circumstances, local economy, for example.

Here in Missouri I quietly thought deep red outstate voters would approve right-to-work. In May the vote on the referendum was moved up to August from November to increase the odds of passage — it still failed:

Missouri voters handed the state’s unions and the labor movement nationwide a win Tuesday evening, opting to reject the state’s right-to-work law.
Tuesday’s referendum in the state gave voters the chance to strike down a law the state Legislature passed last year that would prohibit employees from being forced to join a union or to otherwise pay “fair share” fees to a given workplace’s union. Rules like this are commonly referred to as “right-to-work” laws, and by prohibiting requirements for employees to join a union or pay fees to a union negotiating on their behalf, they are generally understood to weaken labor organizations in places where they are enacted. (CNN)

Maybe Missouri isn’t as red as I thought. Of course, it has gone for GOP presidential candidates for the last five presidential elections. Still, Missouri’s senior senator is moderate Democrat Claire McCaskill. As expected, she easily won the Tuesday primary. I voted for one of challengers to her left. Many of you know, in November 2016 I voted Green in the presidential race because I knew Missouri’s electoral college votes would go Red, not Blue. The U.S, Senate race is very different — every single vote matters. McCaskill is too conservative for me, but I’ll vote Blue in November to keep Hawley out and increase the odds of Democrats taking over the Senate.

It was exciting seeing Cori Bush campaign for the U.S, House with New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but incumbent Lacy Clay still won the primary.

Democratic Rep. William Lacy Clay, a longtime incumbent and the scion of a St. Louis political dynasty, held onto his seat in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District on Tuesday, fending off a primary challenger from Cori Bush, a nurse, pastor and progressive political activist. 

Bush had hoped to replicate the success of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who endorsed her and pulled off a similar upset when she defeated New York Rep. Joe Crowley in June. But Lacy Clay’s longstanding ties to the district were too much to overcome.

Before Lacy Clay won his seat in the 2000 election, his father ? Bill Clay, one of the founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus ? had held it since 1969. Lacy Clay is a career politician, first winning office almost immediately after graduating college. (Huffington Post)

I loathe political dynasties. I like 2-term limits for President, but 8 year term limits in Jefferson City has been a disaster. I do think in the US House we need limited of stay 10-15 terms. We also need big money out of politics.

Another incumbent successfully fended off a challenger.

St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger narrowly survived a tough Democratic primary challenge on Tuesday, but there could still be trouble ahead.

More daunting than the November general election, where he faces nominal Republican opposition, may be governing Missouri’s largest county in partnership with an antagonistic county council. A bipartisan coalition there has clashed with Stenger for more than a year, and Stenger’s last consistent council ally was toppled by a young challenger in Tuesday’s vote.

“It’s going to be a very difficult four years for the county executive unless he develops some support on the county council,” said E. Terrence Jones, a professor emeritus at the University of Missouri-St. Louis whose research includes metropolitan governance. (Post-Dispatch)

It’ll be interesting to watch St. Louis County politics play out. Also interesting to watch will be the County Prosecutor’s office, because incumbent Robert McCulloch, first elected in 1990, lost on Tuesday.

Political scholars and St. Louis-area lawyers said Wednesday that McCulloch lost for reasons other than Ferguson. Having served for nearly three decades, McCulloch dismissed Bell for his inexperience as a prosecutor and didn’t consider him a serious candidate. Part of his message during the campaign was that Bell had never prosecuted a felony case.

“It’s difficult when you’ve not had a tough contest in a long time to gear back up again,” said E. Terrence Jones, professor emeritus in the political science department at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. “Wesley Bell showed a tremendous ability to mobilize millennials and get them involved in the race, which enabled him to close much of the financial gap between himself and Bob McCulloch.”

Bell benefitted, too, from other Senate and House primaries on the Democratic ballot that boosted turnout in districts in north and central St. Louis County, Jones said. (Post-Dispatch)

I was 23 when I moved to St. Louis in August 1990 — McCulloch is the only St. Louis County Prosecutor during my time in St. Louis. It is unclear to me at this time if a prosecutor can implement changes like cash bail reform. Must Bell convince the County Council to pass legislation and get Stenger to sign it?

In St. Louis City Hall the incumbent License Collector & Recorder of Deeds candidates defeated primary challenges. As has been my experience for nearly 3 decades in St. Louis — very little will change.  Next week a look at the November ballot. [NOTE: This post originally indicated the incumbent was reelected as Recorder of Deeds — but challenger Michael Butler received just over 50% of the vote in the 3-way race. Incumbent Sharon Carpenter received less than 42%.] 

— Steve Patterson

Missouri Polls Open 6am-7pm

Election Day is here, which means some TV ads will cease, but new ones will begin.

Though winners in today’s partisan primary still need to win in November, some races will effectively end with today’s results. Examples include Missouri’s 1st US House district. The district is deep blue so the winner of today’s Democratic primary will easily win in November. I hope that person is Cori Bush!

St, Louis County isn’t as blue as the city, but voters last elected a Republican for County Executive in 1986. The city’s “county” offices are the same way — the winner of the Democratic primary will be the winner on November.

Based on the recent non-scientific Sunday Poll, I’m likely preaching to the choir.

Q: Missouri’s midterm primary is Tuesday, will you be voting?

• I’m a Missouri resident, but not registered to vote: 1 [3.85%]
• I’m not a Missouri resident: 3 [11.54%]
• I’ve already voted absentee: 2 [7.69%]
• I’m a registered Missouri voter, but I won’t be voting in the midterm primary: 0 [0%]
• I’m a registered Missouri voter and I will be voting on Tuesday: 20 [76.92%]
• Unsure/No Answer: 0 [0%]

It’ll be interesting to look at turnout from today’s election and compare that with 4 years ago. I’d think both city & county will have higher turnout than it did in 2014. Click here to find your poling place and list of candidates/issues — anywhere in Missouri.

— Steve Patterson

Sidewalk Obstruction Removed After Annoying Pedestrians For 7+ Years

Last month I began going to the Downtown YMCA at the MX to workout (thanks AARP Medicare Plan). Locust would be direct, but crossing 13th in a wheelchair is awkward and construction has the sidewalk on the North closed at 10th. So I take Washington Ave East to 6th. It was there, next to the Eastbound Convention Center MetroLink station entrance, I encountered an obstacle. A wooden box with a yellow stick on top. At times I’d be meeting someone walking the other direction, one of us had to wait (usually me because of direction) while the other went by.

By my 10th visit on July 11th I’d had enough, posting the following on Twitter:

When I got home I pulled up the link on my computer — Google Street View allows you to see current views, but you can also go back to see older views. I also looked through my photos to see why I had. Below is a mix of Google Street View screenshots & my photos. First, background history. The Convention Center Metrolink Station opened on July 31, 1993 as part of our original light rail line. The Eastbound entry/exit is located on the SW corner of 6th & Washington.

Eight years earlier St. Louis Centre indoor mall opened. So opening a  transit station adjacent to a mall is a good thing. After helping to kill downtown’s sidewalks, the mall closed.

So when I posted about this on July 19th it had been an issue for over seven years. Seven years!

Either Metro or the MX developer planned something that was never going to be installed. Rather than cut the bolts off they built a wood box, then later added a yellow pole to said box to prevent people from tripping.  I know this is just one little sidewalk on a side street, but it illustrates how little concern there is for the pedestrian experience downtown — right next to a transit station.

The box & pole were still there on the morning of July 25th, but July 28th I came around the corner and saw they had been removed and the bolts cut off.

It wold’ve been cheaper if the bolts had been cut off years ago, or realize the sidewalk was too narrow in the first place and the bolts not put in there in the first place!

In the big scheme of things St. Louis still has major problems, in that context this is insignificant. To me and others who use this sidewal, it is important,  There are still hundreds of other issues I deal with just downtown. I can’t solve St. Louis’ big problems, but I’ll take on small issues one by one.

Cities in which residents & tourists have challenges as a pedestrian are not going to have bustling sidewalks. Downtown retail/restaurants can’t survive without foot traffic. St. Louis would be wise to make life easier for pedestrians all over the city — but especially around major transit.

— Steve Patterson