Noe å legge seg på minnet...

Denne dukket opp på FB fra en venn og jeg synes dette var så godt skrevet at jeg gjengir det her på bloggen.

Being Green

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman that she should bring her own grocery because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.

The woman apologiezed and explained "We didn't have this green thing back in my earlier days".

The young clerk responded "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."

She was right. Our generation didn't have the green thing in it's days.

Back then we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer botles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed, steriliezed and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over, so they really were recycled, but we didn't have the green thing back in our day.


Grocery stores bagged our in brown paper bags that we reused for numerous things. Most memorable things beside houshold garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks. This was to ensure that public properties (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize  our books on the brown paper bags.

But to bad, we didn't do the green thing back then.

We walked up stairs because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the crocery store and didn't climb into at 300 horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our days.

Back then. we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts. Wind and solar power really did dry our clothes bacl in our early days.
Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers and sisters, not always brand new clothing.


Back then we had one tv or one radio in the house, not a tv in every room. The tv had a small screen the size of a handkerchief, not the screen the size of the state Montana. In the kitchen we blend and stirred by the hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us.

When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers. Not styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. 

Back then we didn't fire up an enginge and burned gasolin just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she's right. We didn't have the green thing back then.

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 razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn't hav the green thing back then.

Back then, the people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxu service. We hade one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed 23 000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

But isn't it sad that the current generation laments how wasteful we were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?

Please forward this to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smart-as young person.

We didn't like beeing old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to piss us of.