Guilt

When it comes to living green, I'm always living in guilt.

Things don't always work like I want them to.

Take the string bags I bought recently - I got them because they would replace my plastic grocery bags, but when I got them I didn't feel so good. They came in a cardboard box. Ofcourse they did! What did I think they would be shipped in - another string bag with a postage stamp on it?

I never thought buying on Amazon.com would be environmentally unfriendly - until the day we got a memory card for our digital camera. It was the size of a postage stamp, and not a lot thicker. Amazon shipped this eensy weensy thing in a box big enough to hold the kitchen blender. To make sure that poor memory card wouldn't rattle around in its big house, Amazon thoughtfully stuffed the box with lots (and lots) of paper. I almost threw the memory card in recycle along with the paper - it was so hard to find.

I drove around to the other grocery store because it has more organic stuff, but then I had to think: is it worth it to drive an extra two miles in a car all by myself in order to buy the eco-friendly organic stuff?

Yesterday I stood for five minutes in the oral care aisle comparing two toothbrushes to see which had less plastic and packaging. Then when I got to checkout, the lady was going to bag it. I shoved my cotton bag in her way, but in the hustle, the plastic bag fell to the floor. Do you think there's a chance the checkout lady had picked it up and reused it? Or did it go into the trash?

This is me - guilty, guilty, guilty. There's a good reason why - if everybody in the world lived like me, we would need 4.5 earths to sustain my lifestyle.

I don't want to borrow our earth's resources, to provide me luxury or convenience, from my little daughter's (or her daughter's) future world. And leave the future generations to take care of the consequences. That is why the compacting, the recycling, the freecycling.

The Compact

Has not been going very well.

I bought a lot of new things in the recent past - had many birthdays and christmas presents to buy.

But the good news is that I've been bringing home those things in reusable bags. I have my net bags (which is one of the new things I bought :)) and have been using them and some cloth tote bags lying around in the house.

The reaction at stores has been mostly good. I just have to be really deft at checkout and give them my bag before they reach for a plastic bag.

This is so much less than a drop in the ocean, but I see people eyeing me and my bags, and hopefully they're not thinking "What a weirdo!". Maybe one of them will want to use their own bag next time instead of the store's wasterful, environmentally unfriendly plastic (or paper) bag.