I suppose today's Americans or basically any citizen of most countries that have lived "the good life" for the past 30 years or so will have a hard time "going green". However, for me, a kid who came out of the "Great Depression" of the 30's and who grew up poor until I was an adult it will not seem as hard as most people think.
We were survivors in those days and we are still survivors and frugality was part of that survival.
When I was a kid growing up during WWII we recycled everything for the war effort and then as life became better for us and we swallowed all the Madison Ave. talk about having more, doing more we forgot about recycling until today we discovered that the average American family throws out 2,460 pounds of paper each year. They also throw away 480 pounds of glass, 540 pounds of metals and 480 pounds of food scraps!
So what can we do to reduce this waste? First of all one could recycle all of it. There are places that pay for paper, glass and metal in the event your local trash collectors do not provide recycling bins. We kids used to take all the papers we could find to the salvage place to get enough money to go to the Saturday afternoon movies. In those days bottles had deposits and we took them back for the deposits. Now some states have put deposits back onto bottles and cans which helps greatly, but if your state has not, then help to lobby for that.
With the price of gas so high today, we find ourselves taking all our paper and metals to our local recycler place and we get good money for these things and sometimes our checks are as high as $45.00!
As to the food scraps, well one can cut down on waste by not cooking more than you need for each meal. One can learn what to do with leftovers to make them more attractive to being reserved in a different way to one's family and if one is a gardener, one can put all the food scraps, except meat, into a compost pile. Feed those pieces of meat to the birds; believe it or not they will eat it. Speaking of the birds, keep a bird watering dish out for them since they will eat insects also and that cuts down on your need for bug aerosols.
To save on gas and energy one can cut down on running to town or the store whenever one has to go except for emergencies. Plan a trip to town or the stores for once a week or like us now we go once a month. Then we have a list so we can efficiently go in a route that avoids unnecessary back tracking.
We sort of "car pool" with our relative who lives next door to us by calling them when we have to go to town and ask if they need anything and they do the same for us. Then one either picks up what the other needs or catches a ride with them.
I understand this may not be a viable solution for many families, but it is for us retirees and it is something we are starting to make part of our lives now.
In order to help cut down on packaging we have virtually eliminated fast foods because of the way they are packaged and because of their high cost and few nutritional values. If it is advertised on TV you can bet that marketing cost has increased what you have to pay, so you may want to consider buying a generic brand of a similar item, not buying it at all or buying it at a salvage or discounted marketplace.
In order to go green one has to start thinking green. When one starts thinking green one can realize that part of the green also means dollars. Thinking green not only saves energy it will save you money.
