I love my job, I really do. In fact, I think I'm one of the alleged 47% of people in Canada (according to Maclean's Magazine: http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=M1SEC891334) who actually enjoy going to work every day; and no, I'm not self-employed. I commute by bike or bus, 40 minutes to an hour every day to an office where I am challenged and allowed to be creative on a regular basis. Most importantly though, I love the people I work with. Frankly, there must at least be a modicum of love there for me to whip up a batch of Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies in order to pacify a certain colleague's current bacon obsession!
We are an eclectic, professional, yet laid-back group of twenty to thirty somethings with a weakness for dogs of all sizes (at any one time there may be up to four such similarly eclectic hounds under foot and desktop). To top it off, we are green-savvy and earth-lovin' to the extreme... well, that is, when we choose to be.The entrance to our office has pleasantly been converted into a makeshift bicycle and scooter lot, while we pride ourselves on indulging in healthy(ish) and organic food choices. Unfortunately, it is here that we fall short. Not so much in the food we eat, but more so in the way we treat the containers that remain once the food is eaten, or even worse, forgotten!
It wasn't until today that I realized just how wasteful we can be. Today, for whatever reason, I chose to clean out our communal fridge. I expected that there would be a few things to throw out here and there, but imagine my surprise when I filled a medium sized moving box with the remains of our lost lunches hidden away in recyclables! Once the fridge had been tackled and I had this lovely box of rotting food in front of me, I was admittedly quite torn, with a burning question looming in my head: "Do I empty and rinse out every single glass and plastic container for recycling purposes, or do I just drag the whole kitten-kaboodle out to the garbage bin and be done with it??" For 5 minutes, I stood back helplessly as Hypocritically Green and Green-Savvy argued over this final dilemma.
Hypocritically Green, a perpetual sloth, frequently makes claims of doing her part for the Earth in order to appease the ever-judgmental environmentalists. She would rather spend her $100 Climate Action Dividend (http://www.smartchoicesbc.ca/EN/home/) on new shoes and dinner with her husband, and of course has no desire to bother cleaning out other people's leftovers. It's Hypocritically Green who will occasionally drive into work when she can't quite get into work on time (insert hanging head here).
Green-Savvy on the other hand has a devout love for the Earth, akin to that which a child has for her mother. Her love is such that guilt hits her powerfully if she even considers doing something that "mother" might not like (such as dumping out a box-full of bad plastics). Green-Savvy aspires to be a composting, home gardening, energy-saving hippie who would rather walk 2 hours to her destination than drive the 20 minutes that it would take otherwise.
In the end, Green-Savvy won out (Hypocritically Green was just too lazy to further any arguments she might have), and so I completed the task of cleaning out every last container (even the tiny one-inch creamers). Some might call me insane for bothering with this (in fact, "crazy" was the less grievous form of the word used on me today). Sadly, others wouldn't have thought twice about dumping the whole lot. This shocking realization is what prompted me to write this post. Yet, as much as I abhor her and find it impossible to revert to Hypocritically Green's slack "efforts" at environmentalism entirely, I am still unable to get ride of the old bag! What is worse, is that our office as a whole seems to have an ever present case of green hypocrisy. How is that we can make the effort to get off our lazy butts and bike, walk, run, even roller-skate into work day in and day out, yet we can't even take the time to eat the food we bring and reuse or recycle the containers that house it all?? Shame on us.
One might ask why I would blog about such a thing and not just approach my work colleagues about my discontent, seeing if together we can motivate ourselves to do better. However, I figure that if we, a group of organic-munching, two-wheel-obsessive Earth babies are floundering in the waste-not-want-not department, isn't it likely that thousands of offices within our city's reach are doing so as well? So, if that is the case, why not get the word out there? It's time for us all to stand up to Hypocritically Green, boot her to the curb and give Green-Savvy free reign to do her thing and keep "mother's" house in order.
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