Where to start? I used to be one of the people “polluting” the earth. I didn’t recycle, didn’t care how much gas I used, got plastic bags from the grocery store and threw them out. All the time I would hear all the usual doomsday jargon. The world is going to overheat, all the species on earth are going extinct, peak oil is here blah blah blah. It was all just too much. For me to even believe what was being told to me, I had to adopt a negative view of my future, when the future was already overwhelmingly negative. Having left home at 15 due to a violent and abusive home life, life had and was always going to be a struggle. Now I had to believe that even if I somehow did make a success out of my life, the earth was going to be too polluted and destroyed and hot for me to enjoy it? So I shut it out, and effectively (although largely unknown to ignorant me) helped destroy the planet. After many years, and a relationship with an astute and intelligent vegetarian, I slowly began to see that all is not lost. Indeed, there are many positive aspects to the environmental and recycling causes around the earth. For instance:
Eighty-four percent of a typical household’s waste–including food scraps, yard waste, paper, cardboard, cans, and bottles–can be recycled.
Using recycled paper for one print run of the Sunday edition of the New York Times would save 75,000 trees.
If every American recycled just one-tenth of their newspapers, we would save about 25 million trees a year.
By turning the heat down, Americans could save more than 500,000 barrels of oil each day–that’s over 21,000,000 gallons.
Building green products can help you eliminate electricity and gas bills at home forever.
To sum things up (I’ll go over it more in my next blog) how about starting all attempts to change people’s views about “green” philosophy as positive? Instead of doom and gloom statements that honestly just push people deeper and deeper into the dark recesses of their psyche, tell them that we could have an amazing , beautiful, and more importantly clean earth if certain incredibly simple steps were taken. Then everyone could feel like they were helping to create a greater existence instead of destroying our only one?
