Since we are on the topic, let me just say that I am tired of all this Green business. I hate that going green is the cool and innovative thing to do. I went green years ago because my parents (and my public school education) brought me up to respect the earth and it's resources. I think that "going green" in my realm is very simple. Don't use as many lights. Watch your water usage. Walk somewhere. Grow a garden. Recycle where possible. (I live in California. We recycle everything.) But by recycle, I don't just mean waste, I mean reusing things. I sewed a quilt using old jeans. The jeans now have a second life, and that quilt is so heavy it keeps me plenty warm at night without needing to blast the heater.
The other "Green" influence in my life was the across the street neighbors. I would see her walking everywhere with a bag when she would go out shopping. When I was very young, I thought her bringing her own bag to the store was silly. Around 1996 I realized this was a good idea. How come it took the rest of America until now to understand this? My neighbor knew about the bag thing long ago, it hit me in '96, and the light is just dawning on some people. What is that about?
Anyway, my neighbor was a bit more hard-core in her environment stuff than I am, for example, I do not abide by the rule, "If it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown flush it down." But, I am a believer in compost piles and growing your own food.
A family of one of my friends always used a clothes line instead of a dryer to dry their clothes. I met this family in the 4th(?) grade, and they have always been doing this line drying thing. They are just another example of people who have "gone green" and didn't brag about it or try to make it cool. They just did what they thought was right. I like them for it.
Sigh.
I suppose that little rant is finished. I'm glad it's out. It had been inside me a very long time.
3 comments:
Amen. But at least there's new awareness, whatever the reasons for the lack thereof may have been. I just hope the green thing isn't a fad- that society will forever keep this stuff in mind when going about life.
One of things that bugs me about living in UT is how difficult it is to recycle. In college my roommates and I paid extra to have a recycle bin and it was great and we had no problem filling it. Paul and I tried to do the same thing here and we can't. Even if we paid extra each month for the bin, there is not enough people in our neighborhood with bins so they won't send the recycle truck to our house to pick it up. There isn't even a place for us to take it to if we wanted to take it ourselves. It pains me everytime to throw out cardboard and plastic bottles, what a waste. Utah needs to get with the times.
I am very excited to have a yard I can grow a garden in. Woot! I'm still trying to decide what to grow. I should blog about it so people can tell me what to grow.
I'm proud of how green you are. Remember how you and I decided we liked green when we were rooming together? We were mostly talking about adding more of the color green to our wardrobes, but I remember we always turned off lights and turned the heater down and complained about the lack of recycleability in Utah. So I like to think we were applying that "green" talk rather broadly.
Post a Comment