ian Stanbury
Enthusiast
- Messages
- 1,095
While checking out at my local Wandsworth Sainsburys recently, the young cashier suggested to me, that I should bring my own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.
I apologised profusely and explained, "We didn't do recycling in my earlier days." The young cashier 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 do recycling in its day.
Back then, we returned milk bottles, corona bottles and beer bottles to the shop. The shop sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilised and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were truly recycled. But we didn't have recycling in our day.
Grocery shops 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 scribbling's. 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 grocery shop and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower 4 x 4 BMW every time we had to go two hundred yards. But she was right. We didn't have recycling in our day.
Back then, we washed the baby's nappies 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. Children 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 recycling 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 Kent.
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 postl, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.
Back then, we didn't use petrol lawnmowers 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 well 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 recycling back then.
Back then, people took the train or a bus and children rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their 4 x 4 Mum 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 computerised gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest Pizza takeaway.
But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we oldies were just because we didn't have recycling back then?
I apologised profusely and explained, "We didn't do recycling in my earlier days." The young cashier 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 do recycling in its day.
Back then, we returned milk bottles, corona bottles and beer bottles to the shop. The shop sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilised and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were truly recycled. But we didn't have recycling in our day.
Grocery shops 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 scribbling's. 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 grocery shop and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower 4 x 4 BMW every time we had to go two hundred yards. But she was right. We didn't have recycling in our day.
Back then, we washed the baby's nappies 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. Children 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 recycling 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 Kent.
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 postl, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.
Back then, we didn't use petrol lawnmowers 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 well 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 recycling back then.
Back then, people took the train or a bus and children rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their 4 x 4 Mum 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 computerised gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest Pizza takeaway.
But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we oldies were just because we didn't have recycling back then?
