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December 24, 2011

"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 recycled. But we didn't have the green thing back in our day." -- Old People Just Don't Get the 'Green' Thing

Posted by gerardvanderleun at December 24, 2011 9:26 AM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.

Your Say

And we hung the washing on the clothes line, lined the kitchen trash can with old newspapers, and washed lightly used aluminum foil to be used again. We mended our clothing and linens, darned holes in sweaters and socks. When the fabric was too far gone, we cut the item into strips, then crocheted them into rag rugs. Which eventually became the dog's bed, and finally, when the dog wouldn't even sleep on it, it was thrown down under the car to catch oil drips. THEN it was thrown away.

Posted by: Deborah at December 24, 2011 9:49 AM

This demonstrates how the "Green" thing is antihuman at its core. All the resources and energy we use today is a display of our wealth. Back in the day, we had, and made do with, less.

But you only have to look at how the poor live. Not here in America - here we have no truly poor people. Go to the 3rd world, where the garbage men pay to take your garbage away, but there is little trash in the first place, since everything is used. THAT is poor. Like the U.S.A. used to be, before we had "the green thing."


Greenpeace has a paper out in which it proclaims that the planet can only support 2 billion, perhaps 3 billion at most. Where are the other 5 billion supposed to go? Yet all the people on earth could fit comfortably in Texas. It is a hatred of humanity, and self, that drives the "greens." They are not green, but merely green on the outside, as a cover for their internal color, which is red, the color of tyranny and oppression. Communists. Watermelons.

Posted by: Michael Gersh at December 24, 2011 11:12 AM

If we were serious about recycling, stores would have to redeem bottles and cans.

Posted by: Alan Kellogg at December 24, 2011 1:00 PM

At one house we used to live in, there was a huge crawl space that we used for storage of cans, bottles, yard implements and such. When we moved out in 1994, the pickup load of smashed aluminum cans brought about $350. The pickup load of glass bottles brought $30. We quit buying beer and pop in bottles.

It genuinely makes sense to recycle aluminum, because it takes about a tenth as much power to melt and reuse aluminum as it does to smelt it from the ore. The rest of the crap, not so much.

Posted by: pfsm at December 24, 2011 4:35 PM

I suspect the next generation won't have the green thing either. These kind of phantasms generally don't last more than one or two generations. I equate the "Green" phenomenon to the Temperance Movement, which in it's day had a similar effect - inflicting a form of mass hysteria onto a great many people. The Temperance Movement also had a relatively rapid demise once its policies were put into place.

I think the Green Thing is on the wane, and I wouldn't be surprised if it and the Temperance Movement share a similar fate:an ignominious end followed by a wave of ridicule and contempt upon which it rides into posterity.

Posted by: gedaliya at December 24, 2011 7:13 PM

Depending on yourself to make the decisions can truly be upsetting and frustrating. It takes years to build confidence. Frankly it takes more than just happening to happen.

Posted by: Joey Scharnberg at January 13, 2012 11:53 PM

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