Recycling: Part II

When you move abroad, you find out new things about yourself. Lots of it is good, to do with the way you rose to the challenge, aspects that you enjoyed more than you anticipated, inner strengths you didn’t know you had. Feel good in retrospect stuff. But you also find out things about yourself that aren’t so nice. These are the dirty little secrets that don’t make it onto the expat websites. For example, you may be rather relieved if you’re honest, to find out from other people’s experience that your kids will lose their American accents when you return home, in spite of your assertion that preferring one accent over another is a form of racism. Or how about the fact that you never thought of yourself as materialistic, but it’s pretty nice, when it comes down to it, to live in a house double the size of the one you left in Britain.

Here is another one. I am not as green as I’d like to think I am. In Britain, I recycled carefully, I didn’t waste things, especially food, we used buses, only owned one car, a diesel, I minded about the future of the planet. Or so I thought. Here, we have two cars (which in our defence, is a necessity, given the almost non-existent bus service). I can salve my conscience by looking at the guzzling SUVs, and think “well, at least my minivan does around 20 to the gallon to your 15”. I try not to waste things, but it is harder, and I do less well. I do recycle, but it took us a while to get round to it, and I’m more lax about it. I have genuine questions as to the value of recycling – in a country where space is so vast, I do wonder if landfill is not a bad option, set against the energy required to recycle (and the comments on my previous post have done nothing to reassure me). It’s not these questions that make me lax though. It’s the conscience-salving that says I might not be doing it perfectly, but at least I’m doing it more than most people.

I can make all kinds of excuses, and have all kinds of logical reservations, but at the bottom level I know this to be true: I cared more for the environment when I loved it more. I know we’re talking global warming and consequences that will affect us all, worldwide. I know that being green is about safeguarding the planet and not about pretty green English lanes and how early in the year daffodils flower these days, and what is causing the decline in the number of sparrows, but there we are, I’m just airing my dirty washing in public and being honest. I may be a citizen of the world, but I am hugely influenced by my local situation.

There’s another element, of course. It’s not all to do with the English countryside. I tried to be green in the UK because everyone else is trying to be green. Sometimes it’s by reason of moral choice and sometimes it’s with financial or other incentive, but it is fairly unavoidable. Being a good citizen is increasingly bound up with being a green citizen.

I don’t share Margaret Thatcher’s view that there’s no such thing as society. There clearly is. We are hugely influenced by those among whom we live. This can be for evil – history shows that the majority of us can turn into the people who spy on our neighbors and colleagues, report them to authorities, turn on them, or turn a blind eye. I think it is often ignored, though, that society is a force for good too. We are all better people for rubbing along beside others who, in all kinds of ways, bring out the best in us. It is easier to behave well if the prevailing wind is carrying you along.