Once a week, in towns across America, the curbside is speckled with bright plastic bins overflowing with recyclables. Recycling is so ingrained in us now that it's jarring when we see a soda can in the trash — it's like seeing a child make an obscene gesture.
But it was not always so. Why, sonny, I remember when people had to save their newspapers, bottles and aluminum cans until there was no room to park the station wagon in the garage (recycling plastic and other paper was unheard of). As you might imagine, not very many people recycled, because it was a hassle. It took many years and much advocacy to make recycling and green living commonplace enough to take for granted.
Now we can focus on new hassles. Like deciding whether driving a hybrid car is worth giving up cargo space. Whether organic tomatoes are worth paying 20 cents more a pound. Whether eco-friendly cleaning products are worth scrubbing harder.
It's these decisions that define how green we are. Some of us are light green — we recycle each week and reuse zippable plastic bags, but we drive an SUV to a store three blocks from home. Some of us are dark green, opting to buy in bulk, garden organically, and bicycle to work. Most of us, I suspect, change greenness like a chameleon, depending on how much time, money, or energy we have at decision time.
But the greener we are, collectively, the more opportunities we have to be green. Call it the Circle of Green-ness, if you will: choosing eco-friendly products increases demand for them, and demand increases supply, and supply drives down cost and improves quality, so you have more and better eco-friendly products to choose from. The same applies to eco-friendly behaviors. The more we do them, the more other people will do them, the less we have to go out of our way to do things like recyle.
So here are some quick and fairly painless ways to go a deeper shade of green:
- Avoid the paper-or-plastic decision by keeping a canvas tote in the car to pack your groceries in. It also makes a great beach bag.
- Choose no-odor or low-odor interior paints so you aren't breathing volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Find them at your Sears store or other paint source.
- Have bills and statements delivered by e-mail rather than by mail-mail.
- Don't put self-contained produce, such as banana bunches or a few apples, into plastic bags. That pound of green beans? Sure.
- Ask home service providers, such as lawn care companies and carpet cleaners, about their environmentally friendly options.
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