Going Green?

It’s a pretty funny story to all the people in California, but to my Texas folk maybe you’ll understand. This past summer I helped staff the Bay Area Urban Project (BAyUP) in California and the director of the project sent out an e-mail with some directions on it.

He said “BAyUP is going green this year, so each house bring you’re own plates to meal times.”

I read the sentence like 5 times and then had to call the director. “Josh, I’m a bit confused. So do you want us to bring green plates? Why do we need to bring colored plates? ”

Yeah, I know. All you California folk think that’s pretty funny. But until I’m came to California, I had no clue what going green meant. Josh, the director, chuckled and had grace enough to explain to me that going green is a phrase used to say being environmentally friendly and it had nothing to do with the color of the plates we bring to meal times. By bringing our own plates to meal times, we don’t create more trash with paper and plastic plates. It wasn’t until I actually came to California that I understood what the phrase meant because now I see it all over the place.

Texas is quite a ways behind in jumping on this band wagon. But I hear reusable shopping bags are catching on there. Well, the problem of consumption, creation of trash, and the impact all of these have on the environment and other people is quite complicated. So here is a link that takes this politically, economically, and sociologically complicated problem and puts it in simpler terms through illustrations and showing the big picture. It’s about 20 minutes long, but worth every minute. 20 minutes to explain a very complicated matter, that’s not bad. And here is a follow up link of ways to do something about the problem. I have found simplification of the problem to be helpful in these early stages of me trying to understand it. I hope it helps others out there in understanding it also.