Environmental vandals of the past!!!

[bootyinblue]

Pinched this from Facebook but it gave me a good laugh. I remember getting groceries at home delivered in brown paper bags which then make the most awesome masks to decorate. It was literally 'the brown paper bag' job.

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.

The woman apologized and explained, "We didn't have

this green thing back in my earlier days."

The young clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment f

or future generations."

She was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were truely 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 household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks. 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 personalize 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 store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 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 the state of Montana. 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 mail, 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 gasoline 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 fountain 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 blades 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 streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. 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 burger joint.

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?

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smartass young person.

[Old Scaley]

All that is true, but we did do some of these things as well:

Throw our rubbish out the car window

Throw old bait containers and plastic bags overboard when we finished with them

Burn everything we could, including plastics, in the old back yard incinerator

Keep everything we caught, even if we ended up tossing back in dead at the end of the day because we didn't want to clean it

Shoot sharks and rays because they annoyed us

Dump stuff in the bush because it was too far to go to the tip, which by the way, was always on fire spewng toxic smoke into the air

Change the car oil with sump draining into the gutter at the front of the house

Tip unused oilbased paint down the drain

Empty raw sewerage into the river and bay

Drink drive because we were too pissed to walk home

Etc, etc, etc

No generation can escape blame and not everything was better back in the good old days.

[Binder]

All that is true, but we did do some of these things as well:

Burn everything we could, including plastics, in the old back yard incinerator

Keep everything we caught, even if we ended up tossing back in dead at the end of the day because we didn't want to clean it

Shoot sharks and rays because they annoyed us

Dump stuff in the bush

Most of those are still current. -

Lot of people still do the first one, costs money to take it to the tip, still allowed incinerators in my shire.

Local fishing club certainly still does the second, weigh in dead fish type comps every second weekend, then spend half an hour trying to give away the fish at the ramp.

Still shark phobic, I follow the rules strictly - never in possession of more than one dead one, mainly because I have already tossed the previous dead ones overboard

If you cant burn it, its still to expensive to take it to the tip.

[davopac]

good thread .

people have been recycling for years ,u are either into it or not .same now as it was years ago ,now they just have more media to advertise it .

me i'm into recycling ,drink from cans so i can scrap for cash ,make the kids put the right stuff in the right bins .i keep stuff and reuse it or fix it instead of just throwing it out.

example: certain plastic bottles i keep for my crab pot floats ,they last about a year then in the recycle bin once they get brittle .

i use the local dump ,used to cost 3 $ goes up a $ a year now 7 $ .

i use charcoal briquettes in my fire pit ,from reading this thread it made me think about what i could burn .went through my rubbish pile and found pieces of wood that was going to the dump.so instead of the wood going to land fill it fueled my fire .

also had excess cardboard and paper that dose not fix in the recycle bin used it as starters instead of those little stinky white block things .

i'm happy saves me $ and get rid of rubbish and i have my fire .a win