As I was putting out the garbage and recycle bins this morning, I stood at the end of my driveway, looked around and was struck by the old debate, “It’s easy being Green” vs “It’s not easy being Green.”
It leads me to reflect on what being Green means. I’m sure it means different things to different people, but I think it deserves a few words here to explain what it means to me.
In my mind, being Green is not a list of actions, but more a state of mind. Once one becomes aware of Green thinking, and I mean really aware, then everything you do, everything you read, see on TV, every conversation, and every purchasing decision is viewed through that filter.
Not everything you do needs to be excessively Green, but you are aware of the effects of your actions.
These two pictures illustrate my point…
In the left hand picture, the homeowners were thinking green as they put their garbage out. In the right hand picture they were not.
Can you spot the difference?
It’s all in the placement of your garbage bags/container in relation to the neighbors. In the left hand picture the garbage truck stops once for two homes, but in the right hand picture, the truck stops twice.
Not to be too geeky about this, but statistically speaking there are four possibilities for this, even if the placement of garbage bags is random rather than actually thought out (which at 7:00 am is a possibility, I admit!). If it’s entirely random, only 25 percent of adjacent homes would put their garbage together. So that means 75% of the garbage placement could be more green.
Can you imagine the fuel used, the tax money wasted, and the extra carbon emissions from the truck starting and stopping twice instead of once in 75% of the cases?
For every 100,000 homes
= 50,000 pairs of homes
= 37,500 stops that the garbage truck does not have to make.
This is just one small example of something that costs absolutely nothing and saves so much, if only people saw the world through a Green filter.
