The Green Thing
The story goes like this. In a line at the store, the cashier told an
older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags
weren’t good for the environment. The woman apologized to him and explained,
“We did not have the green thing back in my day.” The clerk responded, “That is our problem
today, your generation did not care enough to save our environment.”
If I had been there, by
this time, I probably would have banged the guy over the head with my purse.
The woman 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, sterilized and
refilled, that way we could use the same bottles over and over. So ... we really did recycle.
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.
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 the clothes.
When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used
a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it,
not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.
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.
Yes, we did
not have the green thing back then.
By Lois Jamieson
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