Green with Envy, Riddled with Guilt

Friends Don’t Let Friends Pollute

October 3, 2007 at 7:42 pm Leave a comment

There’s a fine line between being a good, green friend, and being an annoying eco-freak. Lately I’ve been trying my best not to cross it, and in usually it’s not that hard to stay in the safe zone because my friends are generally sympathetic to environmental issues. But not entirely.

The other night, for example, I was having beers with a friend and at one point I emptied my bottle and looked around for a recycling bin to toss it into. I soon noticed the absence of a recycling bin, so I crept up to the trash can much like one approaches a gallows. I peered inside, and unfortunately I don’t have a photo of it, but it basically looked like this:

Bottles, paper and food scraps all mixed together in one can. What’s worse, it was lined with an opaque black bag, so not even the can collectors that rummage through our neighborhood waste would be able to see the bottles and dig them out. It made me shake my head in shame, and then promptly head to the fridge for another beer.

Nope, I didn’t say a word. I should have, but I’m afraid of pissing off my friends for picking on their habits so much (I already give this one friend enough trouble for not getting enough vitamins in his diet). But that doesn’t mean that I don’t plan on saying something about it later on down the road. Maybe I’ll buy him a recycling bin and some clear plastic bags as a (subtle) gift. Or perhaps he’ll be so impressed by my own home recycling that he’ll emulate it without me having to say a word (leading by example is so much more attractive than the matronly “do as I say” method, after all).

In any case, I’ll have to deal with the guilt from trashing those two (three?) bottles for now, and I plan on converting my friends later. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Entry filed under: guilty displeasures. Tags: "green living".