It's Not Easy Being Green

“When land does well for its owner, and the owner does well for the land, when both end up better by reason of their partnership, we have conservation.”---Aldo Leopold quoted in Scorched Earth

The sad truth is, as Kermit the Frog said, it’s not easy being green. Culture has moved forward in the last years so that most of us have trash cans for yard waste, trash and recyclables. We won’t ever arrive as long as man is purely self-centered.

It takes work and an educated mind to think in terms of being green. In the store I work in many use plastic bags large scale for their groceries. They take handfuls of napkins, sugar, stir-sticks and other products instead of using what they need. “Me” is their mindset not you and not the environment or the state of the nearest landfill.

My landlord and the tenants in my community throw things into the recycle bin willy-nilly. They don’t know or don’t care what is supposed to go into the bin. They simply know that they have trash and it needs to go out. If they fill up their trash can then they simply put the overflow into the recycle bin. It’s all about convenience with little care about the impact large scale.

In “Land Ethic,” Leopold wrote that ethics rests on the premise that the individual is a member of a community of independent parts. Our instincts, he said, prompt us to compete for our place in the community but our ethics prompt us to cooperate. Leopold’s community included soils, water, plants and animals. Until we choose to live ethically we will live independently. Conservation and green living are not compatible with an independent and selfish lifestyle.