The Green Thing

by Lois Jamieson-from an e-mail

In the line at the store, the cashier told an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.The woman apologized to him and explained, “We didn’t have the green thing back in my day.”The clerk responded, “That’s our problem today, your generation did not care enough to save our environment.” (If I had been there, by this time I probably would have banged the guy over the head with my purse.)

She was right our generation didn’t have the green thing in our 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 recycled.

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.

Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throw away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts – wind and solar power really did dry the clothes.

When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.

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.

Yes, we didn’t have the green thing back then.