Woke-Bashing of the Week: GB News’ war on woke straws – yes really!
Since when was GB News so concerned about the environment, anyway?
Sifting through the internet for the right’s latest beef with ‘wokeism’, I came across something rather amusing: a section of GB News devoted to what it calls ‘woke madness.’
Headline after headline announces another supposed example of ‘woke madness’.
“National Lottery branded ‘scandalous’ for funding organisation promoting puberty blockers guide” was one predictable offering.
“Outrage as Civil Service calendar fails to mark Remembrance Sunday but celebrates trans day” was another trans-bashing tirade.
And “Oxford University sparks backlash over bearded lecturer with prosthetic breasts” provided yet another opportunity for an anti-trans pile-on.
But perhaps the most ludicrous headline was: “Woke paper straws revealed to be WORSE for planet than plastic ones.”
Intrigued, I clicked.
It turns out that ‘woke straws’ are, rather unsurprisingly, paper straws. Apparently, these have now become sufficiently ideologically suspect to earn a place in GB News’s catalogue of cultural grievances.
The channel reported that paper straws, supposedly ‘pushed on consumers in environmentalist drives,’ may actually have a greater environmental impact than plastic alternatives.
The report is based on research commissioned by South Korea’s Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment, which compared paper, conventional plastic, biodegradable plastic and sugarcane-based straws. It found conventional plastic straws performed better across several environmental measures.
Paper straws reportedly produced more than six times the carcinogenic impact of standard plastic ones, referring to environmental emissions, not direct health risks to consumers, and caused twice as much acidification. Conventional plastic straws had the smallest environmental footprint in 10 of the 16 categories assessed.
The article also cited separate Greek research from 2025 reaching similar conclusions.
The findings are certainly worth discussing. But GB News appears less interested in the environmental evidence than in using it to declare another victory in the culture wars.
The piece quotes South Korean lawmaker Kim Wi-sang, who accused the government of pursuing a failed ‘greenwashing policy.’ It also drags in Donald Trump, noting his February 2025 executive order reversing restrictions on plastic straws in the US, before reminding readers of the UK’s own restrictions on plastic straws.
And, just in case readers weren’t outraged enough, it threw in a 2023 poll showing 48 percent of Britons disliked paper straws, with 30 percent disliking them ‘a lot.’
So there we have it: a study about the environmental impact of drinking straws transformed into another instalment in the supposed war on woke. And, since when was GB News so concerned about the environment, anyway?
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