Thursday, April 17, 2008
Recycling and Saving
One of the webpages I frequent had an interesting thread/rant about people who refuse to recycle and use disposable everything. Many of the site visitors had commented in some way about the person or people in their life that don't recycle. As I thought about it one thing kept going through my head.
"I have always recycled, shied away from disposable things, and tried to be frugal with my purchases."
That isn't me pontificating, it's the reality in which I was raised. Since I can remember we were the kids who went through the beach trash cans on Saturday and Sunday evening digging out the aluminum cans. We always participated in newspaper drives, brought along a picnic on Sundays complete with re-usable plastic plates, utensils and cups, and most importantly composted. I also grew up wearing homemade clothing or hand me downs. There are many photos of me or my cousins wearing the same clothes, things got shared, passed around, and handed down. In short, "waste not, want not." This isn't to say there were never paper towels in the house or paper napkins for there were. My parents were resourceful or that is how it was commented on when I was a kid. My dad also carpooled to work in order to save wear and tear on the car in addition to saving gas. Remember the 70s and the gas crisis.
So what makes my parents different than that of my friends or some of the people's families on the site that I visit. I think it's my parents age. My dad was born in 1929 just months before the stock market crash. My mom was born in 1936 at the height of the depression. Both of them came from families that survived the depression better than most. HOWEVER, they remember the depression vividly as well as the war that followed. They traded comic books for chocolate with the soldiers, they went without butter and meat as their families saved money. It is interesting to hear what they gave up and then had to have as well as the habits they picked up during the war that stayed with them. Recycling was the people's part of the war effort, you re-used what you could because money was tight and resources scarce to make another one. Remember cheap products from China weren't all that common. In short it wasn't economically feasible to live a disposable lifestyle.
I believe post-war/boomer babies were not part of the saving society and were very much the beginning of disposable society. By the time living off the earth, recycling and the like were being done by young people it was by the Hippies and they then created the image that environmentally friendly people were "crunchy" or "poor." Usually a mix of both.
What do you think?
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3 comments:
ahhh...you brought back a huge memory...my dad would give us garbage bags at the beach (we went to dewey and rehoboth almost every weekend in the summers) and we'd dig through the trash for cans too! stinky work but such a distinct memory in my mind now that you've brought it back. gotta remember to get clare in the action on st. simons someday.
I knew we were in some way connected! We had a house in Bethany and pretty much spent the summers there and the weekends in the spring and fall!
:)
What I didn't write was that here in Los Angeles recycling bottles and cans is something the homeless people do for money. They are organized and amazing with the amount they collect!
Here's a thought... if there weren't a financial incentive to digging aluminum out of trash piles, if it were just for the good of the planet, would people do it?
'Saving the planet' is only vogue when convenient for someone's pocket book. I get frustrated with the new hotness of 'reuse recycle' because it can be so hypocritical and empty. Eli, I like that your family seemed to do these things as values -- to teach you to honor what you have and not be so obsessed with always turning out the old and bringing in the new -- there is a big difference, I think, in that line of reasoning because it teaches you to think more about the big picture.
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