Standing in line behind an elderly woman at the supermarket, I overheard her apologize to the cashier for forgetting her reusable bags. The young cashier quipped, “It must be hard to get use to these new ideas.”
The woman turned to face me, and we shared a knowing look. Yes, it is true that young people today are very adept at the art of recycling, and they practice it with the meticulous organization of labeled bins in their homes. They grew up in an era of ad campaigns focused on reuse, reduce and recycle. Along with Earth Day, the three R’s were a common theme for school assemblies and the lessons learned then, serve them well now. They are passing on the importance of saving the “good earth” to their children.
However, in defense of the little old lady at the grocery store, I would like to share a flashback of a lifestyle back in the day let’s say pre-plastic when I was 7 years old. My grandparents lived in a little house, cozy and comfortable, on a plot of land just large enough for a vegetable garden framed by grapevines. Tailors by trade, they sewed clothes for the family, washed them in a wringer machine and dried them in the sun. Dinner was made as simply as my grandmother transforming 2 cups of flour and four eggs into pasta while my grandfather selected juicy tomatoes from his garden for marinara sauce and more tomatoes, lettuce and peppers for salad. One quick trip to the cellar brought homemade wine to the table. “Salute,” we clicked our glasses as we placed cloth napkins not on our laps but around our necks. After dinner, dishes were hand-washed by my grandmother, dried by me, and put away by my grandfather as he entertained us with his operatic vocals.
What’s the point of talking about a time when one flush of the toilet was adequate, 6 inches of water in the bathtub got the job done, old cloth diapers were cleaning rags, and baking soda was for cleaning, baking and toothpaste? While we should feel proud about the progress we have made in our diligent effort to go green in our households and about the changes in our town facilities that support our green efforts, somehow something in our current logic is lacking.
In a lifetime, the average American will throw away 600 times his or her adult weight in garbage. This means that each adult will leave a legacy of 90,000 pounds of trash for his or her children. It is important that we use all the resources available today that were not around some 60 years ago during the simple lifestyle of my grandparents. Today’s technology is huge in its potential contribution to our desire to protect our planet. On a large scale, nanotechnology is making huge changes in the solar and wind turbine industry. On a smaller scale our personal tech products are saving trees by helping us go paperless. But here is the rub some of our actions are totally counterproductive.
Here are a few questions to ponder. Is it necessary for every adult American to receive 41 pounds of junk mail annually? Have you cut yourself or broken a nail trying to separate a child’s toy or small appliance from its stranglehold packaging? As you purchase the improved personal technology to make your lifestyle more green friendly, where do all those old pieces of technology and their chargers go to die? Let’s brainstorm what we can do that will make a difference and teach our children that we need to add another R word to our cause: RESPECT for what is already here.
Let’s show our children how to build a compost pile from food scraps; plant a vegetable garden to reduce the cost of groceries; sew, tape or glue to repair instead of discard; buy less with quality over quantity in mind; use the internet to shop for earth-friendly cleaning products; walk or ride a bike instead of driving the car; shop at the local farmers market; and give a tree as a birthday present!
With the spring equinox on the horizon, we can make it easier being green, we can live a life that lessens and limits our human impact on our environment by taking a lesson from my grandparents and Kermit the Frog:
When green is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why
But why wonder, why wonder?
I am green and it’ll do fine
It’s beautiful!
And I think it’s what I want to be!
Felicia Bordick and her colleagues, Carol Smith and Joyce Thomas, are authors of “Kitchen Table Time: Recipes for School Success.” Please feel free to contact Felicia Bordick with comments, questions, or suggestions at [email protected].
