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Thread: Being Green

  1. #1
    Being Green
    Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the
    much older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags
    because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.
    The woman apologized and explained, "We didn't have this 'green thing'
    back in my earlier days."
    The young clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation
    did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."
    She was right -- our generation didn't have the 'green thing' in its day.
    Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to
    the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized
    and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over.
    So they really were recycled.
    But we didn't have the "green thing" back in our day.
    Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags that we reused
    for numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags,
    was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks.
    This was to ensure that public property, (the books provided for our
    use by the school) was not defaced by our scribbling. Then we were
    able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags.
    But too bad we didn't do the "green thing" back then.
    We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in
    every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store
    and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we
    had to go two blocks.
    But she was right. We didn't have the "green thing" in our day.
    Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have
    the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an
    energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar
    power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got
    hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always
    brand-new clothing.
    But that young lady is right; we didn't have the "green thing"
    back in our day.
    Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in
    every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief
    (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana.
    In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have
    electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile
    item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to
    cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't
    fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a
    push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so
    we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate
    on electricity.
    But she's right; we didn't have the "green thing" back then.
    We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup
    or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing
    pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor
    blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because
    the blade got dull.
    But we didn't have the "green thing" back then.
    Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes
    to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi
    service in the family's $45,000 SUV or van, which cost what a whole
    house did before the "green thing." We had one electrical outlet in a
    room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances.
    And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed
    from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.
    But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks
    were just because we didn't have the "green thing" back then?
    Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson
    in conservation from a smart-alec young person...
    We don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't
    take much to tick us off...especially from a
    tattooed, multiple pierced smart ass who can't make
    change without the cash register telling them how
    much!

  2. #2
    I just read your essay. Interesting ideas. But what you consider "being green" back in the 1950s and 1960s (I remember returning soda and milk bottles and drinking from water fountains and drinking tap water, not bottled water) was because that was all technology had to offer. We recycled bottles because we had too -- the technology for disposable plastic wasn't there. The idea of bottled water didn't exist then either. I remember interviewing the Chairman of Exxon back during the oil crisis of the 1970s when he defended the price of gasoline because consumers were buying Perrier bottled water at prices that exceeded the cost of gasoline. I wonder if those of us who were around in the 1960s would have recycled bottles if disposable plastic was around back then?

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