A few weeks after the first Earth Day observance occurred April 22, 1970, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young released the album “Déjà Vu,” which contained the folk rock single, “Teach Your Children.”
The song for the times became an anthem for many movements — for peace, for justice, for equality and for the environment.
We were taught well back then.
We walked to school and church, to the candy store, playground and neighborhood grocery. We carpooled to baseball games and orchestra rehearsal. We rode the public bus to the mall. We recycled old coffee cans into drums and crafted slingshots from tree branches. We bought day-old treats from the bakery. We carried groceries in paper bags and lunches in lunch boxes. We used jelly jars for drinking glasses. We wore handy-me-downs. We made shoulder bags from worn-out jeans and pocket purses from worn-out shoulder bags.
We were cool little conservationists.
So why do we live in a throwaway society? Forty-nine years after the first Earth Day, why do we want and waste rather than waste not and want not?
Take up a position near a fast-food counter and count how many people take, crumple and discard a paper receipt before leaving the restaurant — sometimes even before leaving the counter.
Stand outside a grocery store and count the number of people who leave with single-use shopping bags — yes, the kind that cannot go into home recycle bins. The other day, I saw a family leave the Publix Super Market in Holmes Beach pushing two carts piled high with groceries in single-use bags. Even their milk cartons were bagged.
I’m half-way through a small book, “You Can Save The Earth: A Handbook for Environmental Awareness, Conservation and Sustainability” that contains inspirational quotes and exercises intended to teach us to be better environmentalists, better people.
The quotation introducing the first chapter is from William Butler Yeats: “All that we did, all that we said or sang must come from contact with the soil.”
The exercise for the chapter on interconnectedness instructs the reader to find a quiet place, close her eyes and feel connected to all living things by repeating: “I am connected to life and to our Earth.”
I read on, seeking inspiration.
I worked through the exercises.
I repeated the affirmations: “I love my life, I love my Earth.” “When I choose something Earth-friendly, I choose something good for me and my loved ones.” “I am committed to doing my part to conserve limited energy resources.”
But I kept going back to the family that took home as many as 40 plastic shopping bags from one whirl through the super market.
Are exercises and affirmations enough to move them to change their ways?
I found myself discussing the question with one of my grade-school aged nieces. She thought a shaming would work better than an affirmation. “They should have to wear the bags on their heads,” she suggested.
I tested her idea.
It is embarrassing, shaming to wear a plastic bag over year head.
But it also is dangerous, and for that reason I can’t endorse.
But this concept of shaming those who can’t seem to share our dreams? Well, that’s one way to teach our parents well.
Did you know?
An estimated 5 trillion plastic bags are used every year, according to the Ocean Conservancy, an environmental group.
About 160,000 plastic bags are used each second of the year.
Less than 1% of single-use plastic bags are recycled.
Most single-use plastic bags are made from polyethylene and take centuries to degrade.
About 10% of plastic bags end up in the world’s oceans.
This column was published in The Islander newspaper.
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