This “Green Thing”

Found this on the interwebs and it’s too good not to share:

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the much older lady that she should bring her own grocery bags, because plastic bags are not good for the environment,.
The woman apologized to the young girl 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.”
The older lady said that she was right our generation didn’t have the “green thing” in its day. The older lady went on to explain: 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 school books. This was to ensure that public property (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. 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 throw away 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 blade 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?

-borrowed

Now, as a Gen X person, I cannot say ALL these things were still around in my youth, but a lot of them were.  We still had a ‘milk man’ that delivered milk, and the used glass bottles were returned for re-use with every delivery.  I can remember taking soda bottles back to the store for money, with which I’d usually get enough for an ice cream cone, which was 15 cents at Thrifty’s.  Can you imagine a 10 year old kid walking 10 blocks, pulling a wagon of glass bottles, for 15 cents nowadays?  Can you imagine buying a single scoop of ice cream ANYWHERE for 15 cents?  I was in high school before my family got a second car (and my mother got a driver’s license).  I cannot recall a single time from elementary school through my Junior year of high school (where I ALWAYS used brown paper grocery bags to fabricate book covers!) where I was driven to school.   In my senior year my Pops got a company truck, so I inherited his 12 year old International Scout and would drive myself.  For a few years in elementary school I did take a school bus, but I walked a few blocks to the bus stop and then home again after drop off.  When I needed to go somewhere as a kid, it was on two feet or later, on a bicycle – and of all the bikes I had growing up, only one of them were new, all the others were second-hand. And I used those second-hand bikes to deliver newspapers and to ride out to my Grandmother’s house to mow her lawn… In fact, pretty much every “recreational” thing I had growing up was second-hand.  And it was not uncommon to wear hand-me-down clothes either.  I didn’t have older siblings, but I got a lot of things passed on from my next door neighbor that was like an older brother to me.  And when summer came around we didn’t go out and buy shorts, we cut the pant legs off last year’s school clothes and that was that. Once a month my Boy Scout troop would go door-to-door throughout the neighborhood collecting newspapers to be recycled into – you guessed it – newspaper for printing.  We had one TV in the house until my high school days, and it wasn’t until then we had Cable TV.  I don’t think my parents had a VCR until after I’d moved out at 19… I used “Thomas Guide” map books as a teenager delivering Pizzas and later as a legal courier.  No cell phones, no GPS, just some paper (that never lost signal or ran out of power) and a little common sense. 

I consider myself a nature lover and an old school “environmentalist” – as in, don’t litter, leave nothing but footprints, etc. – but this whole “green thing” is mostly hogwash.  While some of it may be well intentioned,  it is chock full of unintended consequences.  As someone much smarter than me once opined – “when factories producing solar panels can run 100% of their production from solar power, I’ll believe it’s  a viable, long term solution at scale.”  Or something along those lines, that was years ago and Im paraphrasing.  And as I far as I know, that has not come anywhere near a reality.  Most of the physical waste comes from corporations trying to maximize profits (plastic vs. glass is a prime example) and most of the ‘solutions’ come from government trying to ‘create jobs’ and maximize revenues.   After all, providing a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, or more likely was CREATED by government, is what government does best.

By all means, re-using and re-purposing are fantastic and I think everyone should do this.  Walk more, drive less?  Absolutely.   And reusable grocery bags over plastic? Yeah, I don’t have a problem with that.   I just think it would be swell if today’s “greenies” would get off their high horses and recognize that they don’t have all the answers either.  In 25 years they will be getting slammed for all the toxic waste from lithium EV batteries, dead and depleted solar panels, poisoned water tables and the fact that our most fertile, food producing land was paved over for “multi-use commercial/residential buildings” in the name of “progress”.  We all do the best we can with what we have to work with.  Not all ideas are bad just because they’re old, and not all ideas are good just because they are new.  In general, I think it’s a good idea to be less wateful and to take care of your things so you maximize their lifespan.  Less consumption overall.  Simple, right? 

Ok, that’s enough of my blathering…

Thanks for stopping by.