It’s Not Easy Being Green

In honor of Earth Day, I downloaded a book I’ve been meaning to read for months called ‘The Zero Waste Home’ written by one of my favorite bloggers Bea Johnson.  It’s all about sustainable living and creating less waste in our daily lives.  Zero waste, in fact.

[Remember Marjory the Trash Heap from Fraggle Rock? Real trash is much less adorable.]

Because I am the highly suggestible type, this book got me all sorts of motivated to embark on a greener lifestyle.  For example…

•       I donated all my plastic storage containers and replaced them with reusable, environmentally friendly, microwave safe glass.  (Okay, so I haven’t actually done that yet, but I fully intend to – and that totally counts.)
•       I bring a reusable travel mug with me every time I go to the coffee shop…except on the days when I forget, or my travel mug is in the dishwasher.
•       I recycle the heck out of my trash. By which I mean that I try really hard to put my recyclables in the designated bins in the trash room in the basement of my building, but it doesn’t always happen because the recycling bins are pretty far away from the trash room door and our trash room is REALLY gross and smelly and full of feral cats so I won’t actually set foot in there if I can help it.  I usually just stand in the doorway, throw the bags in the general direction of the bins and hope for the best. Because I care.

So yeah, I’m pretty much the best environmentalist ever.  I am all about the greenness of my environs and that of the wider world…or at least the parts of it that I hope to visit someday.  Which is why I got so mad this morning when I was confronted with an ALS – Active Littering Situation.

I’m walking down Broadway on the way to my favorite café, reusable mug in hand, when I noticed the man walking in front of me crumple up the wrapper of his disposable drinking straw and casually drop it on the ground.  I am instantly enraged, especially because on this particular section of Broadway there is literally a trashcan on every street corner.  There were two of them not twenty feet from where this lazy, careless, d-bag dropped his trash.

Naturally, I seized the opportunity to flaunt my newfound environmentalism.

However, because I was full of righteous indignation at the time and have very little patience in general, rather than engage this individual in a thoughtful conversation about his choice to sully our fair city with his refuse, I bent down, picked up the straw wrapper and yelled at him.

Hey, asshole!  Is it really so hard to throw your trash in a garbage can? I mean, it’s literally right there.

Then I marched past him, nose in the air, and in a totally passive aggressive and exaggerated manner, placed his trash in the can.

Only then did I turn to look at him to see if the message had been received.

What I saw was a thoroughly confused Mexican man…who also had Down syndrome.

Sarah – 0

Universe – 1

Even when I try to be good, I’m the worst.  Kermit was right.  It’s not easy being green.