Friday, May 15, 2009

Going Green is a Trial

At least it is around my house. My husband has been fighting my green efforts every since I started using cloth bags at the grocery store 20 years ago. First, it was "This isn't going to solve anything, two people using these bags." Today, he seems embarrassed when the clerk doesn't know how to handle the cloth bags. "It just blows their mind, why do you even bother?" Even when I showed him it had saved over 10,000 bags from the landfill over two decades, he hasn't stopped complaining. The cans and plastic means extra work - and a trip out of our way to go to the landfill. Now it is the soap. For months, he's been complaining that I stopped using bleach in the laundry and started using environmentally friendly soap. "Where did you find that bar of soap?" he asked this morning. "It doesn't even smell like anything."
Not that my husband would want the soap to smell like anything. If it smelled like flowers, he would be complaining about that.
Sometimes it seems I should just give up on going green and give in. Then I think about the 10,000+ bags we've saved and I remind my husband of the fact that we haven't had a septic backup because bleach is killing the good bacteria necessary to break down the solid waste and paper.
Sure, the soaps might not bubble up as much, they may not smell as good and the green bleach I'm using doesn't leave that scent we were always taught meant "fresh and clean" growing up.
But they are doing their jobs without all the harmful chemicals and perfumes - and it's the job they're doing, not our long held belief of how they smell or how many bubbles they produce that matters.

1 Comments:

At 15 May, 2009 , Blogger Patsy Bell said...

I'm glad to see you writing this blog. The Ozarks is such a treasure. Maybe your blog will inspire more folks to use cloth shopping bags. Keep up the good work.

 

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