Every time we go to the grocery store we're reminded about saving the environment. Before we had this "green thing" everyone returned their milk bottles, soda bottles, and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed, sterilized, and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over: They really were recycled. Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags that we reused for numerous things like household garbage bags. Even better we used the brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks to ensure that public property (the books were provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribbling. We were also able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags.
Yes, we were already working "green": 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 powerful machine every time we had to go two blocks. We washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in a machine gobbling up energy: Wind and solar power really did dry our clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not something brand-new.
Yes, we were already living "green": We had one TV or radio in the house; not a TV in every room, and that TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief, not a huge screen the size of a garage door. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do it for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used a recycled box and wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam peanuts or plastic bubble wrap. 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 and we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.
Yes, we were already thinking "green": 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 blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole thing just because the blade got dull. We had one electrical outlet in a room, or if we were lucky one electrical outlet on each wall, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen gadgets.
No, the problem isn't that older generations "did not care enough to save our environment for future generations". They took streetcars or busses, and their kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service in the family's SUV, which costs what a whole house used to. So the next time you use that computerized screen in your all electric vehicle to receive a signal beamed from a satellite 23,000 miles out in space in order to find your local grocery store, think about what you're doing.
