Copyright 2008, Susan DeLay
I realize the only topic getting more press these days than going green is the 700 billion dollar economic bail out and the on-going debate about whether Britney Spears is fit to be a mother.
To be honest, the first time I heard about efforts to go green, my mind wandered to Green Acres. Even if being green is the place to be, Green Acres is not what they meant. Trust me.
Going green is all about sustaining our planet’s resources, and it implies a lot of “R” words: reusing, recyclin g, and rethinking renewable resources.
A typical Saturday morning for me starts with coffee, then pulling out the vacuum and cleaning (or at least thinking about it), doing a few loads of laundry, and any number of other exciting activities I like to reserve for a day off.
But if I were prone to responding to highly leveraged guilt from those truly committed to green-dom, things would look much different. I would spend my Saturday mornings as follows: Wake up, take a water-saving shower with a bucket of rainwater that I collected on my back porch, pull on a tee shirt woven from organically grown cotton (harvested by workers in a Fair Trade organization), slip into (ugly) earth shoes and go into my garden where I would harvest my own vegetables nourished by compost I created myself from used coffee grounds, egg shells, dryer lint, and wet leaves. (Although why I would want to eat anything nourished by coffee grounds, egg shells, dryer lint, and wet leaves is a mystery.)
The fact is that that the closest things I have to a garden are a friend named Jim Garden and a couple of silk plants. Lacking a gar den, on Saturday, I would hop on a mountain bike, and pedal to the nearest farmers’ market for organic tofu and free-range, all-natural, kind-heartedly nurtured eggs from chickens who will eventually be compassionately processed into cutlets that will end up as chicken parmesan.
Going green means limiting your gas, well, everywhere but at Taco Bell where if you don’t get gas, why bother. My morning commute includes an occasional trip through the McDonald’s drive-thru, where I idle behind other gas-guzzlers all waiting for non-Fair Trade coffee and some kind of McMuffin. Then, I cover 40+ miles in a fossil-fuel-burning Toyota. Tree hugging Mr. Greenjeans types might wag a finger in my face, but I’m not up for a trip through the drive-thru and 40+ miles on a bicycle.
Green experts suggest using only one paper towel to dry your hands in public facilities, but only if there isn’t a hand dryer. A true environmentalist would suggest doing away with cushiony soft toilet paper and going back to using pages from the Sears catalog.
Other green suggesti ons include using half as much laundry detergent as the instructions call for and selling used books to a dealer of previously read books. You could also ask the order-taker at the fast food drive-thru to “hold the bag.” Just slap the burger right into your hands, or better, get the person at the window to feed it to you.
If you really want to be green, you can choose a dry cleaning establishment that converts carbon dioxide into a liquid using a high pressure process. This is in place of a petroleum-based neurotoxin that irritates the eyes and the skin. Or you could go down to the river and beat your clothes with a rock.
I recycle and I’m proud of it. Every Monday, I drag two bins to the curb with my trash and each bin is filled with products that can go back to a haven where they are reused. Old magazines wind up in paper coffee cups. Empty aluminum cans of Diet Coke get recycled into Dr. Pepper cans. But only after someone has picked through the bin, removed all the cans, and sold them to a recycling company for 25 cents per ton.
I’ve rediscovered the library. (When it comes to recycling, nobody does it better!) I return wire hangers to the drycleaner and I return Styrofoam packing materials to UPS. Al Gore would be proud.
Occasionally I wash and reuse plastic forks. But if I were really serious, I would just eat out of the can. With my fingers.
Face it, it ain’t easy being green. If you don’t believe me, just ask Kermit.
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