THINKING OUT OF THE BOTTLE

This is not the typical restaurant review you’ve come to know in this blog.  This involves an observation I made on healthy eating and sustainability while attending a weekend retreat.  Since I believe these two topics are inexorably linked, I wanted to share what I witnessed.  And it’s good news!

At this retreat, I volunteered in the kitchen.  I saw massive amounts of waste of both food and containers, but I pulled what I could out of the trash to recycle.  One of the main recycle items I rescued was the humble water bottle.  I pulled over fifty of these crinkly little critters from the trash, and then, on the final morning of the outing….we ran out of bottled water.

I filled a pitcher of water and left it at the beverage station alongside a stack of cups (I wish I could say the cups were reusable or compostable, but we’re not there yet).  I fully expected those in attendance to ask me where the bottled water was, and to mope when they found we’d exhausted the supply.  I also assumed the pitcher would sit quietly, gathering dust like some artifact from the 1950s.

But to my surprise and delight, the lowly tap water in the pitcher was poured again and again until I had to refill it – twice.  Oh, I forgot to mention, the attendees were young people, ages 10-18.

Gives me hope.