Checking out at the supermarket, the young cashier suggested to the much older lady that she should bring her own grocery bags, because plastic bags were not good for the environment.
The woman apologised to the young girl and explained, “We didn’t have this ‘green thing’ back in my earlier days.”
The young cashier responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.”
The older lady said that she was right our generation didn’t have the “green thing” in its day. The older lady went on to explain.
Back then, we returned milk bottles, lemonade bottles and beer bottles to the shop. The shop sent them back to the plant to be washed, 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. Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags that we reused for numerous things.
Most memorable besides using them for household rubbish bags was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our school books. This was to ensure that public property (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalise our books on the brown paper bags.
But, too bad we didn’t do the “green thing” back then. We walked up stairs because we didn’t have an escalator in every shop and office building. We walked to the grocers and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go around the corner. But she was right. We didn’t have the “green thing” in our day.
Back then we washed the baby’s nappies because we didn’t have the throw away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning at 240 volts. Wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days.
Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right; we didn’t have the “green thing” back in our day.
Back then we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of Yorkshire.
In the kitchen we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us.
When we packaged a fragile item to send in the post, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.
Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn petrol just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power.
We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she’s right: we didn’t have the “green thing” back then.
We drank from a tap or a street siphon when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blade in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn’t have the “green thing” back then.
Back then, people took the tram, trolley or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their mums into a 24-hour taxi service in the family’s £45,000 SUV, which cost what a whole house did before the “green thing.”
We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest chip shop.
But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the “green thing” back then?
