Don't Drink the Water

An update on the saga of Flood '08 -- The Boil Order:

Today, I went out to lunch with a good friend of mine to Applebee's. We were seated and given packets of plastic silverware. Our choices for drinks were bottled water ($2 for a bottle of water that came from the Hy-Vee across the street!) or Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, or Sierra Mist from a 2-liter bottle (which they brought to the table to give refills) poured into plastic Solo cups. When our food came, my soup was in a styrofoam cup.

Here was my thought: how many pounds and pounds of extra trash is being loaded into our landfills over the course of these past few days and the day or so that is left on this boil order? (The rumor is that the plant where our water comes from is up and running and the boil order should be lifted tomorrow about noon once they finish all the flushing and tests and things) So on top of the economic impact (they pointed out today on CNN that the corn lost in this flood could even affect the cost of something like a bottle of Gatorade, which uses corn sweetener), now there's even more environmental impact. Had I known I'd be eating with plastic from styrofoam, I probably would have rescheduled this lunch until the flood drama was over -- if only to keep a little less trash from trashing our environment.