This thread is very interesting to me. At an early age, I’m talking before I even hit double digits, I became a self-proclaimed environmentalist. Growing up as one during the excess of the 80’s resulted in being made fun of quite a bit. So much of what I was taught at an early age made me sick. Stuff like the Earth was provided for man to do as he wished, and other nonsense. I decided I would do whatever I could do to reduce my impact on the environment. It started off with recycling everything and anything I could. Gradually as I got older and much more wise, I was able to start reducing my waste. I would ask myself, “Even if the packaging is recyclable, is there an alternative that has even less impact?” In high school I was vocal about environmentalism, which made me even less popular. Apparently, making suggestions on how to be “more responsible” kind of pisses people off.
One of my first jobs was working for a landscaping crew that cut all of the grass alongside the roads and on the medians in Virginia Beach, VA. My buddy and I were the “blowers.” Ha ha! I know what you’re thinking. Anyway, our first task was to clear the roads of litter before the mowers came through. Then we would be taken back to the beginning of the road and start blowing the grass clippings back up into the grass and off of the road. Being environmentally conscious, we alternated days in which one of us carried a recycle bag, in addition to a trash bag. On a weekly basis we would fill up the entire bed of my buddy’s pick-up truck and take it down to the City recycling facility. We were not told to do this. It was not in the contract with the City. It was just something that my friend and I decided should be done and we were willing to make the effort. The City ended up praising us while taking credit for what we did of our own accord.
In college, I participated in environmental activities and promoted environmental causes. Now that I was living on my own and buying my own stuff, I realized how much waste there was in plastic and paper bags at grocery, and other, stores. I made a conscious decision to no longer get bags and started bringing my own hemp and canvas bags. Since I made that decision 17 years ago, I have not once gotten a plastic or paper bag. Early on, I took a lot of flack. For “security” reasons, the merchants would claim they “have to” put my merchandise in their bag. This made no sense to me. If I bought it, and I had a receipt, where is the problem? When a merchant would not back down, I simply walked away and did not pay for the stuff. In more recent years I have become known as the eccentric “bag man” in this town. I love the fact that when I go to Europe, mostly Germany, many merchants do not even have bags and you are expected to bring your own. It in fact saves them money and is environmentally responsible as well. Why this is so hard to catch on, I cannot understand. Oh…wait a minute. Americans are lazy, selfish fucks, so if there is any effort to “being green” the rest of us can fuck off.
With the popularity of “being green” growing, it has become accepted and followed, to some extent anyway, by many more people. I don’t see this as a bad thing, but part of me is buggered by the fact I was preaching this same stuff 20 years ago and nobody would listen. But I digress. It is more important that people are starting to take a more responsible attitude towards their impact to the planet. I am also not bothered so much by the commercialism of “being green”, as one of the arguments me and my fellow environmentalists used to make was that companies could make money off of this if they would just commit to it. Unfortunately, humans are inherently selfish, which is one of the reasons I abhor Capitalism. Look at where the US economy is now! Greedy mortgage companies took advantage of people who had no business taking out such huge loans, especially with variable interest rates. Now, I have to pay to bail out the large financial institutions who wrote these mortgages. But that is a whole other topic. Because of Capitalism and greed, which are really the same thing, you have companies taking advantage of the popularity of “being green” and making up crap to make a profit. That is bullshit! But at the same time, if we have to deal with some of that in order to get a larger portion of the corporate world to actually do right by the environment, then I’ll live with this alternative for the time being. While I’d prefer mandatory, government instituted reduction, reusing, and recycling, seeing where we came from in the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s, at least some of the world’s population is finally getting the picture.
I probably came across as pretentious and self-righteous to some people, but this is what I believe and how I live my life, to reduce my footprint on the Earth. Do I look down on people who don’t make an effort? I’m not going to lie…yes! I work for the Government and we have been mandated to reduce paper by going digital, and we have recycling containers we are supposed to use for plastics, aluminum, and paper. Many people in my office will print out 100+ page documents, single-sided, so they can review it. The printer defaults to single-sided, but if you take the 10 seconds to change the settings to double-sided, you are at least reducing the waste in paper by half…although they should be reviewing the electronic copy. I actually print out less than 20 pages a year and either double-side things that have to be printed formally or, better yet, I use the second side of paper that was discarded by the lame fucktards in here and set the printer to manual paper and walk to the printer and insert the clear side of my own sheet of paper for the print job. In my particular building, no person is further than 15 feet from the recycling bins, yet half of the people in here throw their bottles, cans, and paper into their waste basket, which is tossed in the garbage dumpster by the cleaning crew. To me, this is just being a lazy, self-indulgent fucktard. Most of these fucktards are fat and could use the exercise for fuck’s sake. It makes me sick.
Over the past year I have been conducting experiments with my car to figure out ways to significantly reduce my emissions and gas consumption. I am not financially in a place to buy a full electric, or at least a hybrid to bridge the gap, but I do drive a manual transmission car that averages over 30 mph. Last Spring I came up with the idea of shutting the engine off at stop lights and in traffic conditions when my car was idle for at least a few seconds. Since I started this, the average mph for my car has gone up by over 3 mph. In addition, I have already saved 10x more money than it would cost me to replace both the battery and the starter should they fail due to their over use starting the car so many times.
So where am I going with all of this? Well, I believe everyone should make an effort, but I no longer push my ideals of what that effort should be on people. I still like to share my efforts in hopes someone else might institute them as well or, even better, come up with a superior alternative and share it with me.
I am an environmentalist. Have been and always will be one. I am proud to call myself one. But everybody else has to make their own decisions. My only responsibility is to raise my kids with the understanding of how they individually impact the planet and what they can do to reduce it. Hopefully they will make decisions later in life that will continue, and maybe expand, my efforts. They are the future, and I want them to have one.
