Let's Green

"Green" is not only a simple adjective to describe a lime, an olive, or a piece of jade's color right now; or a noun to illustrate a color which is a mixture of yellow and blue; the color of Shrek or the color of New York Jets. The word, green, becomes a verb to express that someone is doing something which can protect the environment, as well as a noun to categorize someone who has capability to care for the environment. Nowadays, furthermore, the word represents an investment and a future trend in the business field. When you open any investment guides or business magazines you found on streets, the "Green Industry" always stands as the hot topic in their suggested list. However, I think to achieve "Green" in the United States will be a long journey.

When I was a high school student in Taipei, Taiwan years ago, in the corner of each classroom, there were couple of recycle cans for plastic bottles, papers, aluminum cans, and so on. Every month, we even had an inter-class competition to encourage young students collecting the reusable materials. Moreover, a few years ago, the City of Taipei required all the residents, restaurants, and stores dispose of their garbage using city-approved trash bags which they have to buy in the supermarkets or the convenience stores, so people will reduce their garbage quantity and be encouraged to do recycling.

Every Monday and Friday night, when you hear the tinny version of the Beethoven's classic "For Elise", the recycling truck trails behind the trash collectors appearing around the same time at the same place in your neighborhood. You have to separate the plastic wrapping and bags from the plastic bottles, collect and bind the flat recyclables together, such as Styrofoam trays and cardboard boxes, fill a small bucket with your kitchen waste such as the leftover meals, fruit peelings, and vegetable leaves, and then give those to the recycling workers. If you carry all the bound paper and that nasty kitchen waste on a wrong day, you will get an earful from the sanitation workers and embarrassedly take them back home at the front of your neighbors.

Gathering reusable materials becomes a part of daily life for the 2.6 million residents in Taipei. At the same time, same place, every week, high school students with big eye glasses, housewives wear aprons, grandpas dress casualy, and business men and office women outfit formal suits, all show up at the gathering place everyday. People always chitchat about the nasty weather, some new construction around neighborhood, someone's daughter is going to marry, someone's grandson is going to study abroad, blah blah. People share their recycle experience online and even post it on the bulletin boards in neighborhood parks. We can call it as a green custom, a green life style, or a green city of recycling now. Although the capital of Taiwan still has brunch of improvement spaces in different perspective of environmental protection, the people here are outstanding in recycling tasks.

Back to the US, the green issues have been raised for many years, especially about reduction of carbon and saving energy. However, the recycling is one of the most important and fundamental processes, and of course, the one of the easiest ways of doing Green. If people still keep using the materials extravagantly, companies and manufacturers still keep cutting the rain forests, drawing out the petroleum, and producing the products, the at the end, the materials and the resources just gone are squandered.

How about you, my friend? Do you have any plans about being green now?