Green

If you think my blog is suddenly looking like a preppie wardrobe, I won’t blame you. What with posts titled Pink and Green. Maybe I’ll write a few more posts titled Oxford Shirts and Martha’s Vineyard to complete the look. Jokes apart, over the last year, all said and done, I have come to appreciate the whole Green thing. I have in my own way, tried to be a little more responsible about environment while trying to say away from its faddish, Upper East avatars.

Thirty years ago, my mother would have laughed at the Green nonsense and dissed it as yet another Western fad. Recycle? Compost? People write and talk about this? She would have laughed and gone back to negotiate stainless steel dabbas with the bohareen in exchange for her eight sarees and three trousers. I did not know anybody who did not do this. It was a way of life. Fuelled by necessity. Growing up, we saved newspapers. At the end of each month, we sorted them neatly in two piles - English and Vernacular and took them to the raddiwallah. He weighed them carefully, calculated the rate – higher for English, lower for Vernacular and then gave us an option of either buying coconuts from him or settling the deal in cash. Although some haggling took pace occasionally over accuracy of the scales or the going rate or both, all parties were without doubt happy at the end of the deal. It was a win-win situation.

Paper towels were an ill afforded luxury as was aluminum foil and shrink wrap. People simply put small steel plates on steel bowls to cover leftovers in the fridge. Grocers wrapped daals and peanuts in neatly cut squares of newspaper (and nobody worried about lead in the printing ink). In smaller towns like the one I grew up in, even gray water was not wasted. In little washing spaces in the backyards, water from washing clothes and dishes was diverted to a small grove that grew luscious bananas, papayas and calocecia.

So when I arrived in United States nine years ago, it was a bit of a shock. The first thing I noticed was the abundant use of paper towels. My roommate used paper towels to catch crumbs from his toast, using it as a plate, and then crumpling it and throwing it away and ripping another sheet to clean the table afterwards. Disposable cups and plates, copier paper, single serve packs. Nobody gave it a second thought. And as I embraced the fast paced, go-getting, goal oriented lifestyle I embraced this cultural emblems too. Before I knew it I was buying packs of disposable plates and piles of paper towels. I was throwing away kitchen scraps but buying hummus and fertilizers. My grocery was brought home in throwaway plastic bags. I recycled religiously, used the grocery bags as trash-can liners but I was also wasting a lot without realizing it. And it dawned on me only last summer while growing strawberries and tomatoes and peppers that I could be more responsible and waste less. Waste not want not.

Over the past year, I have tried to minimize my environmental impact. I use less soap in the washing machine and my clothes turn out to be just as clean. I use reusable canvas bags to get grocery and other supplies. I compost. I had stopped using disposable plates not for environmental reasons initially, but simply because I thought it was tacky to feed people in paper plates unless it was a child’s birthday party. But I know people who will use disposables even if there are having only two dinner guests because its convenient (than what?? Loading the dishwasher with two more plates??) We have always kept heating lower. Our thermostat is set at 67F. We would much rather wear warm pants and a sweater than crank the heat up to 75F. We don’t drive SUVs or mini vans. Although I wanted one badly, I saw BigGeek’s reasoning. I would be driving it alone most of the time, so I would just be wasting gas.

I am living in a society that appreciates leaving a smaller environmental footprint. And all the little acts mentioned above have some societal validation. It’s hip to carry reusable bags and to compost. It’s not yet hip to buy smaller houses. People with one or two kids would still much rather live in a McMansion. And when both parents are work and the kids are in school, the energy consumed in simply heating or cooling a big empty house is tremendous. I wish builders had some other way of upping the status ante than just giving more square footage.

So, we still have a long way to go. Even a simple act of taking reusable grocery bags can be a hassle. I have forgotten it so many times when I was just starting out. Now its become second nature. As have a lot of other things. So, now its time to ask what more can I do? For instance, I can surely remind myself to take containers to restaurants to bring home leftovers instead of using the restaurant supplied plastic or foam containers. Or try making toys at home from things that would be thrown away. Use reusable gift wrapping or reusable cloth bags instead of paper. There are so many ways to reduce waste. All it needs is a little creativity.