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You Might Be A Greenie If...

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...you've managed to reduce the volume of waste that your household produces to such an impressive degree that your garbage man occasionally knocks on your front door just to make sure that you're still breathing.

...you haven't bought a new piece of clothing in years because everything you own finally came back in style again.

...you reuse the same tea bag so many times that the water in your cup finally reverts back to its clear color once again.

...you get a little giddy every time you go out into your backyard to turn your compost pile.

...you've accumulated so many reusable shopping bags that the weight of them in the back seat of your car has negatively affected your gas mileage.

...you try to repurpose confounding items such as used Band-Aids, the small plastic safety caps from your diabetic cat's insulin needles and the Silica packets from all of your herbal supplements.

...you've frozen so many leftovers that you ran out of conventional containers, forcing you to pre-portion food into makeshift dried corn husk parcels bound with rubberbands you've saved from bunches of store-bought broccoli.

...you run through so much white vinegar in your household that you've got Heinz on speed dial.

...you don't need no stinking plastic bottles or supposedly eco-friendly yet BPA-lined SIGG aluminum containers when your ceramic mug wrapped with a holy sock cozy has served you quite well, thank you very much.

...you think that going part-time veg is pretty cool since it gives you a good excuse to finally make those quinoa-seeweed-okra crocquets that your full-time veggie friend constantly raves about.

...you've used the same razor cartridge for two years ever since you learned that if you pat it dry between each use, it stays practically as sharp as day one.

...you are intent on creating a bountiful assortment of diverse household plant specimens with very little out-of-pocket expense simply by sprouting pineapple tops, peach-avocado-mango-apple seeds and multiple random clippings from your local botanical gardens (that you secretly pinched off with your fingernails).

...your idea of the latest, greatest blockbuster experience is watching "Food, Inc." and "No Impact Man" while snacking on your own organically grown dehydrated heirloom veggie chips...but Pirate's Booty will do in a pinch, too.

...you document the color depth and decomposition rate of your soon-to-be black gold via regular updates to all of your social networks.

...you habitually rescue improperly discarded recyclable materials from public garbage receptacles and no longer notice or care that everyone seems to think that you are a homeless person.

...just for fun, you run after people clutching their improperly discarded recyclable materials in the air while yelling, "Excuse me, you forgot this!!!"

...accidentally shattered pieces of your fine China make you secretly smile (rather than gasp) since you finally have an excuse to mosaic your newspaper collection bin.    

...you scrub your organically grown produce so vigorously that it screams out, "I swear there's no more Salmonella or E coli on me!!"

...you get excited about squirreling away banana peels, coffee grounds, eggshells and teabags into a cute little countertop composting container.

...you rack your brains trying to figure out how every single one of your houseplants got mysteriously infested with microscopic black flies before finally realizing that your cute little countertop composting container is a breeding factory.

...you laugh maniacally as you place small ramekins of vinegar around your plants in an effort to snuff out said microscopic black flies -- drink this, beeyotches!!

...as soon as the holiday season is over, you begin admiring seed catalogs (the way would-be-brides drool over wedding magazines) and plot the strategy that will ensure that your organic garden blows the roof off the hiz-zouse.

...after struggling to start 68 different varieties of seeds in saved eggshells and painstakingly hand-rolled newspaper pots, you come to terms with the fact that your 3% success rate will at least yield enough food for your hamster...which is a good thing, otherwise you might have popped an artery.

...washed, air dried and hand ironed aluminum foil is as common a sight in your kitchen as the reused zip top bags that you bought back in the 90s.

...you lust for a full photovoltaic system but due to current budgetary restraints, you settle for making a few homemade solar panels out of a collection of saved pizza boxes wrapped with many, many hand ironed sheets of your washed, recycled aluminum foil.

...you have a poster of Ed Begley, Jr. in your garage and still consider Daryl Hannah to be one of the original nature girls despite the fact that her face appears to be the victim of multiple plastic surgeries and about 3289 micrograms of Botox.

...paper towels are a distant memory ever since you discovered that holy socks work way better...plus, you always seem to have an endless supply of them on hand (ha ha).

...you triumphantly pour pasta water, canned veggie liquid and household "grey" water into the landscaping materials around your house and give your household plants a good long drink everytime enough water collects at the bottom of your dish draining rack.

...sometimes, just sometimes, you wonder why people claim to crave Twinkies or Pop Tarts when the organic raw spirulina bars that you found in the bulk bin of your local natural food co-op taste like perfectly sublime brownies on acid...shhhh, it's your little secret.

...you sit down in front of your computer to read the morning's green news and somehow, you rarely ever finish until nightfall.

...your idea of a great date is walking to the farmer's market with your main squeeze (even if it's a 7.4 mile round trip that takes half the day to complete) just so you can ensure that the locally grown goodies you purchase have the lowest carbon footprint possible.

...it's never enough to follow just 8745 green/eco Twitterers -- you're constantly on the lookout for new green resources so that you've really and truly got all of your bases covered.

...you choose to make (rather than buy) all of your own toiletries using supplies from your cupboard...mayo and baking soda anyone?

...you think that sorting through all of your recyclable household items is actually kind of fun, plus you find great satisfaction in adding removed paper labels from cans and glass jars to your newspaper bin.

...shopping at the store takes 3 times as long as the mere mortal because you scrutinize every label and keep a running tally of "brands to boycott".

...you have no need to purchase wrapping paper or bows since everything necessary to dress up your homemade or re-gifted treasures can be found in your recycling station.

...you've actually grown fond of that line-dried crunchy towel sensation and purposely leave the vinegar and/or baking soda out of the wash rinse cycle.

...you are fully capable of engaging in a 2 hour long debate on why high fructose corn syrup is the bane of our existence.

...you purposely avoid consuming even organic corn on the cob ever since you learned that it commonly cross pollinates with neighboring GM corn crops and find that if you close your eyes while chewing on soaked organic barley, it is a fair substitution.

...you actually like the texture and flavor of Tofurkey and are convinced that it tastes almost as good as organically raised beef...er pork, yes pork.

...you chart your daily household carbon output via spreadsheet, constantly challenging yourself to beat your all-time record of .00241115 tons (which was accomplished when everyone left the house to visit relatives for two days).

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Comments
  • Superhero_green_final

    Posted by Bob Kurz - August 29, 2009 04:46 PM

    I'll add one to the lineup. "You might be a greenie if after eating an apple at lunch, you wrap up the core, tuck it in your pocket and add it to your compost pile when you get back home at the end of the day."

  • Friend_small

    Posted by lohan jhjhjh - September 09, 2009 08:40 AM

    The term "green" is on everyone's minds these days, whether it's getting more green as in making more money, or going green environmentally. The need for more green technology and practices is definitive, as the impact on our environment from our appetites for fossil fuel machinery and methods of generation electricity have taken a toll. An effort does have to be made to repair our planet, but many consider the loss of amenities to be too great to surmount. However, there are ways of getting by: solar water heating devices, electric high speed trains getting installed for public transport, and so forth. If you start going a little more <a rev="vote for" title="A day in the green lane turned me red and saved money" href="http://personalmoneystore.com/moneyblog/2009/06/20/day-green-lane-turned-red-saved-money/">green</a>, it's like giving a cash advance to the Earth.

  • Dad5

    Posted by Surinder Saini - September 10, 2009 07:38 PM

    Elizah, like always another one of your thought provoking and amusingly interesting tid bits about being a 'greenie'.

  • Friend_small

    Posted by sotocapmania - September 14, 2009 07:02 PM

    Some of the things written, I thought you had a hidden camera in my home!
    Nicely done and so true for some of us who really are trying hard to be aware of the values we must learn and do to make our Planet a better and safer place for us. Thanks for the smile I got after reading your article.

  • 768245349_c977d3e510

    Posted by laura campanelli - September 16, 2009 03:55 AM

    oh my poor tea bag.. great little story

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