House Guests in a Non-Green House – What Do You Do?
July 8, 2008 by Gabrielle
Filed under Green Living
So, let’s just say you are at the beach visiting friends, family, parents, whomever. And your hosts are great. Happy to see you. You’re happy to see them…But after a day or two you realize that the things you do at home to conserve energy and water and other resources aren’t things that happen at your host’s house. Recycling? Nope. Turning off lights and TVs when they’re not being used? Uh unh. We’re not talking tiny things here, we’re talking about actually turning the TV on as you are leaving the house “so the dogs won’t get lonely.”
Hypothetically speaking, of course.
Do you say something? Do you take this opportunity to talk about some things that could do the earth (and their electric bill) good? What if you’ve already had that conversation? Do you pull the cans out of the trash and find a recycling place yourself? Or do you just suck it up for a week and enjoy your vacation and your hosts’ hospitality?
What would you do?
we are so in synch. i had this same experience at the inlaws; i kept asking (even though i knew the answer) um, do you recycle? where do your recyclables go? answer: NO! we don’t! (i think they were getting annoyed). do you have a rag? NO! use the paper towels. humph. i was horrified by the trashing of glass, plastic, paper. garbage out the door every day more than once! i didn’t say much except to keep asking a question i already knew the answer to.
it sucked.
Oh dude, you know it. No recycling. No regard for water left running or lights left on. Which we would shut off every time we saw them. At one point, Michael was like, “the dogs don’t really watch the TV, you know. You know that, don’t you?”
Vacation was nice and always thankful for a free bed, but it is nice to be home.