Recycling is very fashionable these days among the younger generation, which speaks reverently about reducing carbon footprints, promoting alternative energy sources and buying most any product with the prefix “green”.
While today’s generation takes great pride in recycling an aluminum can or two. Boomers didn’t recycle cans, they physically returned milk bottles, soda bottles and even beer bottles back to the stores, which shipped them back to the manufacturers. There, the glass bottles were washed and sterilized to be used over and over again. Boomers even paid deposits on bottles to make sure none were discarded.
Today, some consumers recycle plastic bags, but the great majority ends up in landfills where they languish for the next 50 or 60 years while decomposing. Boomers didn’t use plastic bags; they used ordinary brown paper bags, which conveniently evolved into trash bags for everyday disposables. Paper bags, by the way, decompose in a matter of weeks, not years.
Young mothers today buy throwaway diapers for their infants. Boomer moms used cloth diapers and washed each and every one – no matter how soiled. What Boomer does not remember a dirty diaper soaking in the commode? Cloth diapers were used and reused before they were passed on to another neighbor or family member with a newborn baby. How’s that for recycling?
Stores today advertise energy efficient appliances – clothes driers for example. Boomers didn’t use clothes driers. They grew up with clotheslines. Moms hung the family’s clothes out to dry and let the sun do the job. That’s pretty energy-efficient, wouldn’t you say?
Air conditioners consume a lot of energy. Boomers didn’t have the luxury of air conditioning. They had electric fans.
And leaves weren’t raked and put in heavy plastic bags to be hauled away by gas guzzling trash trucks. Rather, they were burned in piles, often at the curb in front of each home.
Burning leaves? What about the air quality?
For the record, asthma was a rarity in the 50’s and 60’s. Today it’s a common aliment. Maybe the air quality wasn’t so bad after all?
Today’s world is one of plastics and throwaways. Clothes are used and discarded. Appliances are used and discarded. Bottled water – which requires untold amounts of energy in manufacturing the plastic bottles and transportation to the markets – is found in every home, business and refrigerator. Boomers turned on the faucet when they were thirsty.
So the next time someone says something about Boomers and recycling, tell them we were green before green was popular.