That darn Older Generation Just Didn't Care About Conservation

[Jack Jones]

I sure do miss paper bags. I could pack a lot of groceries into one double paper bag. I hate the plastic ones.

In giving up soda and most bottled drinks, I found I like my tap water (filtered) in a glass that I can re-use and it's healthier

And a few years ago I switched to a safety razor. I get more mileage out of a 10-pack of double edged blades and they're cheaper. Closer shave too.

I think things have changed some for the better, but some for the worse. It's called progress right, LOL??? There's something to be said about simplification in some areas. There's certainly things I wish we could go back to.

[Quillback]

I'm old enough to remember, back in the ealry 60's when I was 5 or 6, we used to drive from Wichita to Kennett MO to visit my grandparents. This was before the anti-litter campaigns came out. Everybody, and I mean everybody, when traveling down the highway and finishing a fast food meal, tossed everything out the window, bottles, cups, wrappers, bags, everything. The roadside ditches were filled with trash. Things today are much better as far as that is concerned.

[David Unnerstall]

Yeah it burns my biscuits to see beer bottles thown in the trash when we used to refill them. Whenever I am at the local tavern I always drink draft beer: the barrel is refilled, the glasses are washed and reused and I recycle the beer.

[cnr]

Interesting posts. Gotta say it seems like some things have improved and some things have gotten worse. I do think we are better off now with society being more conscientious about the environment. Water quality is much better overall than it was back in the 50s & 60s. The Great Lakes were a mess back then (lake erie) and some rivers would not even support fish. Heck, back in those days no one "recycled" the fish they caught.

[Jack Jones]

All true, CNR, but check out this article about Lake Erie:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/science/earth/algae-blooms-threaten-lake-erie.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

[cnr]

Wow. Thanks for the info, that's really sad to find out. Being an Ohio native when I was a kid I saw first-hand how bad the lake was back then. I had no idea the lake was suffering again. From reading the article there are three problems occurring that are contributing factors, phosphates, early warming trends, and zebra mussels. The only one easily controllable being the farming run-off of the fertilizer phosphates. I always had dreams of doing a trip to Lake Erie for smallmouth fishing, guess I missed my opportunity.

[bfishn]

... I do think we are better off now with society being more conscientious about the environment...

Exactly the point. My folks and their peers weren't "bad" people, they just didn't know any better. To their credit, they changed as they learned. All the things I mentioned happened in the early-mid '60s, a few years later that no longer happened (in my area).

To flip sides for a moment, the G-word literally turns my stomach these days. In particular, the Green Building Initiative (LEED) is such a huge con game... LEED APs suck an unnecessary 10-15% out of a construction job to do the paperwork that earns the Owner a... framed certificate to hang on the wall. All an Owner would have to do is tell the architect they want an energy-efficient, small environmental footprint building in the first place and they could save that waste. They wouldn't get the plaque, but they'd be way ahead $ wise. Too many people are stroking big $ from the status of being "Green". (See the South Park episode with the hybrid cars and the resulting Smug Storm).

Awareness is all it took for my folks to change. To that end, I'll tolerate the younger whipper-snappers claiming to be the Green Generation, as long as people are learning, and practices are improving.

[Haris122]

Yeah some things are pretty stupid. I remember an example in Environmental Politics I think, when I took that class in school, where some paper mill or something of the sort, that was treating their waste-water pretty good, ended up changing that process and in turn ended up polluting at a greater level, just to get tax cuts or a government subsidy for having only a certain percentage of the undesired pollutant (apparently they didn't qualify until they started making the process dirtier than it had been.) Talk about the wrong approach to being green.

[chub minnow]

Definitely no green thing. My grandparents "disposed" of their empty cans right there in the lake or river. Somenof their friends did the same with old car batteries and tires! So they didn't recycle a lot of the important stuff.

[woodman]

Grainds of sand verses the elephant in plane site.....Polution people refuse to see......