Being Green....?

Just read this, thought I'd repost it here

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

The woman apologized 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 f
or future generations."

She 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 and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were truely recycled.

But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags, that we reused for numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks. This was to ensure that public property, (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 too 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 grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

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

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 back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

But that young lady is right; we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by 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 to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, 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 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 have the green thing back then.

Back then, 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 taxi service. We had 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 from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

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

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smartass young person.

We don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to piss us off.

And if you ban the plastic shopping bag, what will I put my rubbish in? I'll just have to buy them. Doesn't make sense to me.

This has been semi discussed before but I wonder if anyone has actually done a life cycle comparison of a plastic bag vs a 'green bag'? I did some quick sums based on weight and an average of using 5 plastic bags per week and to come out ahead based purely on weight per year you have to use less that 18 green bags/yr using those figures, which going by the number I see in our units' bins each week most people don't come close to achieving. This does not take into account bin using plastic shopping bags as bin liners (which I do) which would massively change the results.

Then there is 'carbon cost' of producing the 18 green bags vs the 260 plastic bags, what's the difference between the two? I just thinking out aloud here but honestly i'm not 100% sure that the 'green bag' is the savior to the environment that it is often slated to be, open to being proved wrong, this is just my initial impression. Finally what do most people who use green bags do for bin liners, Buy them? If so shooting yourself in the foot there both economically and environmentally :P

Edit: Just for clarity and to preempt shenanigans, you can directly compare the two by weight because green bags are too plastic, they are polypropylene...so direct comparison is valid.