Tell me, how did you become "green"?

[IntlMom]

So I always find it curious how someone ends becoming “green”….. I know my journey was long, to say the least, how did you get to where you are today?

Here’s my saga:
I have always ALWAYS been a saver, not a spender. Even as a kid. When I “grew up” saving and being frugal just came naturally, though it was not modeled for me as a kid at all. (what does this have to do with being green, you ask? Hang with me…….) So when I married, I set about to be a “frugal coupon queen”… and I was! As the years went on, I began to get interested in not only saving money with coupons (and buying tons of processed junk!!), but saving in general. I began to learn about buying in bulk for the sole purpose of saving money. I began to learn about cooking from scratch for the purpose of saving money. (can you begin to see where this is going yet?) Someone, somewhere told me about The Tightwad Gazette, and I devoured it!! (I still re-read it every year or so for encouragement and “new” old ideas)…… I think that began to be the turning point for me. I began to see the benefits of reusing and buying in bulk and repairing items and cooking from scratch not just for their cost savings, but for the environmental impact that they have also. It didn’t happen overnite, but I began to dive into thrift shopping, recycling, gardening, trying out whole wheat flour…..and all that other “crunchy granola” stuff that people tend to associate with “being green”.

This was about 10 years ago. Around that same time, I explored acupuncture and made friends with a “Birkenstock-loving, at home birthing, granola-crunching” hippie! (we are fast friends today, though separated by many miles) The rest, as they say, is history. I now devour every bit of information that I can about being eco- friendly. I do what I can with what I have. (oh, and in case you don’t know this about me yet, I am married to a Monsant@ loving kind of a guy. He works in the agricultural pestiside industry. So the very industry that I despise, pays for my organic veggies….. LOL Let’s just say that my “becoming an environmentalist wacko” has not gone over really well in my house…. too bad, so sad!

Ok, that’s me…… what about you?

[krbshappy71]

I have a friend at work that is "green" and the more conversations we had the more I realized what I could be doing myself and how one person does matter.

My mom was "green" as far as frugality goes but it never had a "save the earth" spin to it. It was simply using that piece of string to death because she didn't want to spend a single penny on a new piece of string.

So I will give kudos to both of them. It all matters.

[KeithBC]

I was raised by parents who lived through wartime (WWII) and postwar rationing. They raised me to believe that waste was a sin. I grew up in the late 60s and was strongly influenced by the hippie / back-to-the-land / environmental movement of that era. (You can tell from my avatar, no doubt!) The Club of Rome and the "Limits to Growth" book, around 1972 made a very strong impact on me. (I recently read the 30th anniversary edition of Limits to Growth - society has learned nothing in 30+ years!) I guess I've been green at heart since then.

[Dancing Lotus]

FV got me on the path. When I came here some odd yrs ago it was strictly because I was broke and need to learn how to save money. Saving money and going green sorta go hand in hand so one thing lead to another. Somewhere along the line I noticed I actually started to care about the environment as much as my pocket.

Then I had an awaking. After reading the teachings of Buddha I understood how my choices affect not only the earth by my own Karma. So first it was about money and now it's about Karma. I still have a long way to go but have come a long way as well.

[chevy_chick95]

I grew up in a house where hamburger helper was home cooking. But I was very lucky to have my grandmother around to teach me frugal ways. When I moved out on my own, I must have forgotten how to live that way. When times became desperate I went back to my roots.

[ms.mel.who]

Love this thread.

I feel like I wax and wane through being green. My sophomore year "hippie" english teacher showed a slaughter house video. And that was it, I was a hippie. Then in college I was a punk rock hippie. Now I am a suburban housewife chasing after children turning of lights and readjusting the thermostat from my husband!

Sometimes I fall of the wagon, but I always feel so much more true to myself and better when I am striving to be greener.

[Nada.Leona]

I think for me it started when I was 16. I read about factory farming and realized that there had to be some changes made. So I went vegetarian. I have been vegetarian on and off since then (12 years!), more on than off, thankfully. And it just snowballed from there. Being vegetarian lead to me wanting to use less leather products, which lead to more organic foods, which lead to healthier choices in transportation, and on and on and on.

I'm not even close to how green I'd like to be, but we get closer all the time. We try to purchase organic foods as much as possible (our rule is, we can spend up to $1 more for organic, but that's it); we recycle everything and check the packaging of other products to make sure it is indeed recyclable; we consider the environmental impact of our vehicle vs. what we can afford; we reuse everything to death.

I would like to do more -- gardening, biking, taking public transit, buying all local, etc. But it's a work in progress, our green lifestyle, and we're doing our best.

DH also has aspirations for working with the city to clean up our harbour. One day he'll get to that.

[sunshine]

I was raised by parents who lived through wartime (WWII) and postwar rationing. They raised me to believe that waste was a sin. I grew up in the late 60s and was strongly influenced by the hippie / back-to-the-land / environmental movement of that era. (You can tell from my avatar, no doubt!) The Club of Rome and the "Limits to Growth" book, around 1972 made a very strong impact on me. (I recently read the 30th anniversary edition of Limits to Growth - society has learned nothing in 30+ years!) I guess I've been green at heart since then.

Yep - that's pretty much me (minus the books - never read either one), and the fact that my grandmother was full blooded Native American and raised us to honor the earth (not in a religious way, but still) and add in my Christian beliefs that say we are to be good stewards. . . .and I'm more green that some of my tree hugger friends.

[leighcat]

I guess I always hated littering, and felt that the earth is a living thing that needs to be taken care of. I loved camping and being outdoors in the woods as a kid. I would spend hours exploring. I remember we had a family next door that was very earthy when I was a kid and my parents thought they were odd, but I admired them. I actually learned from them though it took me a long time to realize it. I missed them when we moved away.
I was never very fond of chemicals and I think my turning point was when I became pregnant. With my first child I started to see how many chemicals and un-natural things are in things we eat and use. With my second child I had a midwife and she sent me to the natural foods store and that was where I learned about new alternatives to everything else out there. I even did cloth diapers with my second baby and loved them! I do wish it wasn't so expensive to be green though. I do whatever I can afford. Soon I hope to be growing some of my own food. I recently found a recipe for deodorant that I want to try making.

[Dutchie]

“Birkenstock-loving, at home birthing, granola-crunching” hippie!

I had to laugh at this because I would never consider myself a hippie.
However...

I gave birth to most of my kids at home (the others had to be delivered in a hospital because of medical reasons - not my choice).
I LOVE Birkenstocks and granola.
I cloth-diapered all 5 of my kids all the time and I never gave them jars of baby food.
I breast fed them all and never had to make one single bottle for them. (I was too lazy to prepare all those bottles and breast feeding was just easier (and cheaper.))
I didn't give them baby food out of a jar because I wanted to know what my kids were eating and healthy eating has always been a huge hobby of mine.
I hang-dry most of our laundry.
I buy most of my fruits and veggies at a farmers' market and one of the reasons that I now have chickens is because of my concern about the antiobiotics that are in chickens and therefore their eggs.
We have had chickens on and off most of our married life.
I actually prefer not to eat meat and when possible I eat vegetarian meals.

I guess - after reading this -that I am a bit of hippie at heart.

BTW great thread.

[Judi Dial]

When I met DH in college, he was an "econut"...this was in 1978, and so was I. The apt. I had before I became DH's roommate, had watermelon crate endtables. (I worked at the college cafeteria.) We, like Keith, grew up in the 60's-70's and both of us had parents who'd been through the depression, WWI and WWII as well. The money part was the hard part for us.

DH had been on his own since high school, and my Dad had $$ and never taught me about frugality, he just paid the bills. I knew more tricks about saving $$ than he did. He was a saver, etc. but never talked about it.

Judi

[Telephus44]

I started on the eco stuff when I was in college. I've been exploring diffierent spiritual paths, and started studying Wicca.
The idea of the earth as a sacred being really resonated with me, and I started buying more organics, second hand items, etc. I don't identify with Wicca as much any more, but I definitely believe in the earth as the mother of all and the interconnectedness of all life on her (Gaia hypothesis)- this leads me to tread much more lightly.

[shoiji]

I can't say I am completely green. But growing up in the 60's and 70's when the economy was bad had the family turning off lights, growing a small veggie garden, wearing extra clothes in the winter, note: we did NOT have air conditioning, wearing hand me downs, things like that. So in a way it was a part of me. Then I sort of lost my way when on my own and came back to it.

[mndtrp]

I'm a fan of repurposing things, so reuse and recycle fall in naturally. I'm not a fan of lugging around a lot of things, so the reduce aspect was easy. I get a kick out of seeing how little trash I can throw away, and I like throwing the compost on my lawn.

I started realizing the benefits over things that are natural, as opposed to endlessly processed. This isn't to say I don't use chemicals, or don't eat processed food, I just do it to a far lesser extent than any of my peers.

[The Muse]

My path is similar to yours. I've always been a saver and it turns out that saver behaviors also very often turn out to be green behaviors.

There was a time in my late 20's when I tried to fit into my upscale suburb, but it turns out I actually preferred thrift shops to the mall, cooking to going out, and driving a Yaris to a fancy German Sports Car. So I decided to embrace it.

Now I've moved to Europe where I'll live in half the space I used to, I don't own a car, I live with much less than I'm used to, and I've never been happier.