No, this isn’t about Orange Peel. It’s the holidays. We should put him in a box and not unwrap him until after the new year so we can all concentrate on what’s really important… straws.
I was at Olive Garden last week – we will pause now to allow my Italian family to collectively gasp in horror – and when the server brought me my diet Coke, a straw was already in it with the paper ripped off.
I know we live in Alaska and sometimes it still takes awhile for news to reach some people but we’re talking about straws here. Plastic straws. Straws that have been in the news for over a few years now for the harm they are causing. Straws that kill ocean life. Straws that fill our dumps. Straws that will be here for millennia after we’re gone – assuming humanity somehow manages to figure out how to NOT destroy itself before that.
But here was a straw in my drink, given to me IN the drink so there was no way to return it unused. Here was a straw that would just go in the pile of straws that may someday collapse our planet with their weight. Here was a straw given to me as though it were still 2010 and we had no idea of the destruction it was causing.
So here’s the thing – WHAT THE HELL, OLIVE GARDEN???!!!
Get with the program. Don’t put straws in drinks. Don’t give out straws unless someone asks for them. Maybe just wash your glasses clean enough that we shouldn’t have to worry if we put our mouth on it. Or, better yet, buy those new straws that don’t destroy the earth. What a concept.