What is "being Green" or "Environmentally friendly".

This missive has been prompted by other postings I've seen on forums I'm in so it's not a new idea but one that has got me thinking again.

So what is being green really about? Is it something that you have to do or is it a lifestyle thing? How hard is it and can you opt out for a bit?

For me being green is hard, damn hard. I was a tee total, celibate, vegetarian Buddhist greenie back in the early 90's and a very committed some say militant one at that which was extremely hard work and after 9 years everything fell apart, mentally and physically and my wife got a husband back all be it a car owning beer drinking swearing couldn't give a toss type of person.

Since then I've got a lot more mellow in my old age and in the last 3 years I've became a born again greenie but this time I'm not chaining myself to railway lines to stop nuclear waste moving for re processing etc.

However being a greenie has it's drawbacks. I mean it's hard work trying to get through to a 16 year old shop assistant that you don't want a plastic bag for the carrots and another for the apples, courgettes, bananas etc. It's also hard when you are buying a cucumber and get thrown out of the shop for removing the plastic coating and giving it to the shop manager to dispose of.

Why don't shops provide paper bags for the fresh produce? They do it for mushrooms so why not everything? Carrier bags, why do they have to be strong plastic? A bag for life can be made from cloth just as easy as plastic... I've made several bags from old pillar cases and duvet covers. One which my wife snaffled away was made out of a pair of jeans.....

Why do local councils insist on you putting out all the recyclable items in separate boxes and bags then the collectors proceed to put them all in one side of the bin waggon.

In years gone buy you shopped local and didn't need to recycle because everything was fresh. you bought things you needed from separate shops. you bought cloth from a haberdashery, paper, cellotape etc from a stationers, fish from a fishmongers, meat from a butchers who had probably slaughtered the beast in the back of the shop so you knew it was fresh.... not now, convenience is the game and Te£$o is the name. Mind you it's not the total fault of these big companies because i fear we have become more lazy in the last 20 years or so. A lot will say it's because women have to go out to work to help pay the mortgage..... why do you have to own a house? why can there not be much more social housing?

I remeber living in a street house and everyone knew everyone else and looked after each other. Now you get up go out of the house into the car go to work come home in the car and go in the house probably without speaking to anyone on the way to or from work......

Is it green for a rich person to pay a lot of money "to be green" or is being green more ethical if done on a shoestring? For instance if a rich person pays say £40,000 for an electric car is that being green er than a person who has not got much money and has to use the bus? both could be classed as being green but which one is greener?

I feel being green is a lifestyle change just the same way as it is going from full fat milk to skimmed milk or 3 sugars to none. One of the greatest jolts to the system I have had recently was to actually look in my wheelie bin and see what was there. I lost a bearing and I knew it was in the bin via the hoover so i emptied the bin out in the back yard. Thankfully there was no dog waste or food waste but masses and masses of plastic wrappers from various bits we had bought. Just out of curiosity I weighed all the plastic and it came to 2.95 kg..... 6and a half pounds of plastic that our council don't take for recycling because " they would have to send it to Cheshire" 3kg a fortnight ( don't get me on about 2 weekly collections" 72kg a year from one house on average.... 39,000 houses in my town.......

2B cont,.,