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It’s Not Easy Being Green


It’s not easy being GREEN!

I’m GREEN, have been for over thirty years, wait a minute I’m getting older, the 70’s are further back than I thought, make that almost 40 years and counting…Math never was my strong suit!
You could say Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring was a wake up call to the world.
It wasn’t called being GREEN back then, we were trying to SAVE the Environment by way of recycling and staying away from artificial ingredients, chemicals and additives.
When I was first married, it was the rage to pay attention to the environment, save this,
don’t use that, read the labels, watch out for red dye #5, phosphates and artificial ingredients. On and on it went and we tried to follow all the rules to help SAVE the WORLD. We cooked from scratch, avoided convenience foods with all the additives and preservatives. Now everything is fast food, cooked from frozen or prepared by others who don’t care about the salt, fat and calories. We composted our yard waste and garbage, only bought white paper products, didn’t use paper plates
or anything disposable, used cloth diapers, didn’t eat Tuna fish (I remember trying pilchard the “other” tuna fish) and conserved water. I even remember the slogan on a tee-shirt popular back then: “SAVE WATER…SHOWER WITH A FRIEND!”
We had jobs we could walk to or used public transportation, I use to park at a central location then walk around town to do my errands. I still walk as much as I can; sometimes we go three or four weeks without having to gas up our vehicles.

These days the push is on to use less paper, the Internet is causing newspapers to
become obsolete; but we still get plenty of junk mail. Recently I’ve seen a message at
the bottom of some e-mails asking me not to print the message unless it’s…
vital to the pursuit of my happiness!

Convenience is popular when it comes to certain things, not many use cloth diapers these days and I have to admit I draw the line at cleaning items like peanut butter and mayonnaise jars just to put them in the recycling bin. Maybe if I had an “electric” dishwasher instead of my in-house human dishwasher…(thanks hubby!)

I get a little irritated when people are almost militant and quite demanding when they preach to me about being GREEN because…
I AM GREEN, I’ve been living the GREEN lifestyle for a long time, it’s easy once you get into the habit.
I think MY carbon footprint is quite small compared to others; my future may hold the use of adult disposable diapers… though I hope that’s a long way off!
Here are a few books available at the Waltham Public Library on the subject, there are many more available in Waltham and in the Minuteman Library Network “check them out!”

There are also many books for kids to get them started on a lifetime of being GREEN

posted by Jeanette

Doreen adds: April is Keep America Beautiful Month!
Visit our April Keep America Beautiful display near the First Floor Browsing room. Check out a book(s) on topics ranging from recycling and ecology, to conservation and being green.

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