Our Parents And Grandparents Were Green Before Green Was A Thing

An economy capable of producing far more than
 is needed is dependent on persuading consumers
to buy far more than they need.

It's heartening to see renewed interest in reusing, recycling and learning to do with less, all in an effort to avoid wasting limited resources and helping save the planet. But prior to the rise of the orgy of consumerism that has characterized the post World War II generation and those that followed, our ancestors did remarkably well in the conservation department. 

Examples:

- People bought far fewer of the over-processed, over-packaged and over-priced foods and other goods offered at our supermarkets and malls, goods that are transported from all over the world and often harvested or produced by workers living on slave wages. Pre-WW II generations raised as much of their own food and even sewed as many of their own clothes as possible. 

- Milk, soda and other beverage bottles were routinely returned to the store for recycling, where they were sent back to the plants from which they came to be washed, sterilized and refilled, over and over again. And buying drinking water in disposable plastic bottles would have been unthinkable. 

- Brown paper grocery bags were reused for such things as garbage bags, shelf liners, wrapping paper or as covers for school textbooks. 

- People walked more, limited their shopping to a weekly trip to town, and didn't rely on multi-horsepower vehicles for frequent errands or shopping trips. 

- Cloth diapers were used instead of the disposable ones now seen as a necessity. Clothes were dried on a line, utilizing wind and solar energy instead of 220-volt driers. 

- By using highly efficient wringer washers, the same water was often used for more than one load, with the dirtiest work clothes always washed last. Rinse water was often reheated to wash some of the everyday clothes, and homemade laundry soap made as a byproduct of home butchering projects was often used for a detergent.

- Children wore hand-me-down clothes from their older siblings or cousins, and often wore the same outfits to school or elsewhere until they needed to be laundered.

- Most meals were prepared from scratch with home or locally grown produce, and were served at family tables without the distraction of television or cell phones replacing family interaction. 

- Lawns were small and kept trim by push mowers that helped provide lots of exercise without a need for expensive workout equipment. 

- Even writing pens were refilled with ink, ball point pens had replaceable ink cartridges, and razors had replaceable blades.

- Socks were darned and other clothes were patched and mended as long as possible.

- People adapted to warm weather without air conditioning, and in the absence of thermostat controlled central heating systems, kept themselves warm around their cooking stoves and Warm Morning heaters. On cold nights they simply added more blankets to keep themselves comfortable.

Needless to say, not everything about the good old days was all that great. But when it comes to reducing, reusing, or recycling, they did far more to help save the planet than the generations that have followed them. They thrived on reclaiming, refurbishing, restoring what they had, along with resisting buying so many of the things we have come to see as necessities.