down the plug

I am making a stand today. I am avoiding Starbucks. I know they’ll be worried.

It is something that I have thought about before but today it was in the news so I chose this moment to make my one man boycott.

You see Starbucks have been wasting the amount of water most small countries use. In fact we're talking 23.4 million litres. Every day.

Every time you go in there you see taps that are left running constantly. Look at the wee sinks that they put the spoons and thermometers in between uses – they are placed in constantly running water and in a world that is seeing the value of water more and more it is ridiculous.

Of course it seems less of a priority in this wee country as I type this while looking at the rain streaming down the windows of the seemingly more ethically aware Ground. If there is anything we have an abundance of it is water. But that isn’t the point. If it were the point then the fact that the Starbucks shops in drought affected countries such as China, Australia and Romania are also leaving their taps running would be horrendous.

I don't often urge you to read the Sun but take a quick pop over and read the full story. It still pains me slightly that this is an issue I have noticed but never fully appreciated until I spotted it on a tabloid newspaper front page. Maybe I need to do a bit of work on my observational skills before goin back in the classroom.

So maybe Starbucks won’t miss my custom today; and maybe we won’t find a way to share the surplus rain we have in Ireland with the rest of the world any time soon, and maybe I need to look at some of the waste of which I am guilty – but until I can feel a little better about my extra hot latte I’ll be spending more time in Ground.