World Environment Day

June 5th each year is recognised by the United Nations

as World Environment Day.

Thought you might like this story ...

The Green Thing
(The Environmental Issue)

In the queue at the supermarket, the cashier told an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.

The elderly woman apologised and explained, "I’m really sorry, but we didn't have the green thing back in my day."

The cashier answered, rather rudely, "Well, that's our problem today.  Your generation did not care enough to protect our environment."

He was right - the older generation didn't have the green thing back in their day.

Back then, they returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the shop or off licence. They sent them back to be washed, sterilised, refilled and re-used. So the same bottles were used over and over.  Bottles weren't plastic, so didn't need to be recycled.

They walked up stairs, because there weren't lifts and escalators in every shop and office building. They walked to the local shops and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time they had to go to a supermarket.

They bought fruit and veg loose, not pre-packaged, and washed them at home. They didn't have to throw away bins full of plastic, foam and paper packaging that need huge recycling plants fed by monster trucks all day, everyday.

Back then, they washed their baby's nappies because they didn't have the throw-away kind.  They dried clothes in the garden on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up KW's -  back then, nature's wind and solar power really did dry the clothes.

Kids got hand-me-down (mostly hand-made or hand-knitted) clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing shipped from the other side of the planet.

Indeed, they didn't have the green thing in those days.

Back then shops repaired goods with funny things called 'spare parts' - they didn't throw the whole item away because a small part failed.

Back then, they made do with one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room.  Back then, the TV had a screen the size of a handkerchief, not one the size of Wales.

In the kitchen, they blended and stirred and mixed by hand because there weren't machines to do everything for you.

When they packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, they made use 0f wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.

Back then, they didn't burn petrol or electricity just to cut the lawn. They used a push mower that ran on human power and hand clippers for the hedges.

Yep, they didn't have the green thing back then.

People exercised by working so they didn't need to go to a brightly lit, air conditioned health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity and then drink litres of that special water from those plastic bottles.

They drank from a water fountain when they were thirsty instead of using a plastic cup or a plastic bottle every time they needed a drink.

They refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new plastic pen, and they replaced blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole plastic razor just because the blade got dull.

But they didn't have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their parents into a 24-hour taxi service.

Most rooms only had one electrical outlet, rather than an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances.  They didn't need a computerised gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest fish & chip shop.

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