Now there’s a title that’ll never get picked up on Google.
My point? When you look any list of “green things to do to save the planet”, each reader will tend to view the list as being extremely black and white. They’ll either be things that they will do, and therefore think OK, or not do, and think that they are the most completely ridiculous unthinkable things to do.
Take this list which I’ve taken from Save Cash & Save the Planet” (2005, Friends of the Earth. Collins)
Under reusing worn-out items, the book lists 6 bullet point examples:
1) Cut up old T-shirts and sheets into duster-sized squares for rags and cloths.
2) Save worn toothbrushes to help scrub sinks, and awkwardly sited dirt patches.
3) Give new life to worn-out bath towels as handtowels and bath mats. Use old nappies as mop-up towels.
4) Give grubby sponges a new lease of life via the washing machine
5) Save punctured inner tubes to tie things onto bikes, and to render bikes less nickable
6) Use ends of wallpaper or newspaper as drawer liners and wrapping paper for home-made cards.
Now we do 3 out of the above 6. No matter which ones, but we (fairly hardcore reducers and recycle
rs) consider the other three to be a bit cranky. Are they cranky per se, or is this the black/white issue, that we think they’re cranky and green precisely because we don’t do them?
This starts to point to how very tricky it is to shift people’s perceptions of what is right and good, and what they should be doing, away from what they’ve always done, and (probably) what their parents always did.
I guess I’m lucky in that my dad’s parents used to dry and reuse teabags, wash and reuse foil and clingfilm, used rolled up newspaper as a draught excluder and fitted secondary glazing using heavy duty polythene that was too opaque to see through. How many of those would you do?
Black or white then?
