Wait, the article you linked said he called manufacturers to get a range of daily production/market estimates of straw production. Hardly seems fair to say based on "nothing".
The kid estimated every American (all ~325 million) used nearly 2 straws per day. It's just such an absurdly unrealistic number.
I don't know how we can accept he conducted actual investigative research at the age of 9, particularly when the data is so wildly off from reality, no records were kept, and he can't even name some of the companies he supposedly based his "data" off of.
That... Doesn't strike me as absurd. When I was a kid, I'd definitely use more than that.
McDonalds serves like 70M meals a day alone. Customers often grab a couple straws and use one. Ask anyone who has worked fast food -people take three straws and discard two all the time.
If you include straws like those little red coffee straws and juice box straws I can absolutely see hitting 500M.
The number of at least 100M, so he got the order of magnitude right, I'm sure.
Nobody cares how many straws you own... the (potential) issue was how many straws are discarded per day, and specifically how many made their way into waterways. It's no where near 500M - that is indeed an absurd number.
Being one order of magnitude right isn't sufficient here (he could have just as easily made up 999M and still be one order or magnitude right) - particularly when fabricated "data" was used to push for legislation that impacted so many people yet has had so little effect on the environment.
Additionally, this kind of stuff causes the public to lose faith in "science" and our legislators that push this type of agenda through.
Not one entity stopped to research the data themselves - they used a 9 year old's made up data to ram through laws. Really should give us all pause when considering new legislation.
