I believe I’m doing my fair share to save the planet, often more than my fair share. In the past, many people did the same, without thinking about it. I resent those who tell you what—and how much—you should be doing. How much have they contributed to saving the planet? How much? I’ll tell you how much: not much. I’ll tell you how I know, because they’re all around us, busy telling us what we should be doing, when we should be doing it, what we shouldn’t be doing, when we shouldn’t be doing it. It takes so much of their time, so much of their energy, that there’s no time left in their day to do anything to save the planet.
    Do you think that I’m alone—the way I feel, I mean? There are plenty of people like me. Just look around. You’ll find people like me in your apartment elevator, in the subway, in the deli, in your office, even in your bed. Yes, in your bed! People like me are all around you. You just have to take the time to stop telling people like me what to do, and look and listen.
    For me, it all started in my crib, when I was six months old, give or take a few weeks. That’s what my analysts have told me. My mother was accustomed to cats. Her mother had cats, as had my grandmother and my great-grandmother. So, my mother thought only in terms of cats, not in terms of dogs and cats; only in terms of cats. I feel that my entire upbringing—if you want to call it that—was in reference to cats. If my mother had only left me alone, I think I would have figured it out for myself and perhaps have left a few analysts to talk amongst themselves. But then you see, my mother had always had cats, and having had cats my mother had a ready reference point.
    I should tell you right now that my mother’s cats—as well as my grandmother’s cats and my great-grandmother’s cats—were toilet trained. Not just litter box trained, but toilet trained. You don’t believe me? Well, come over some day and I’ll show you. Mitzi’s still around, as is her son, Max.
    Instead of letting nature take its course—letting me shit in my diapers like any other kid, which would have gotten very old quickly, let me tell you—my mother put Mitzi’s great-grandmother—the matriarch of my family’s cats—in charge of my toilet training. I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice it to say, I got through the litter box training and onto the toilet seat within eight months. Fortunately, I have little recollection of this period in my life.
    What I do remember are my diapers. They were cotton, the kind you rinse, wash, and reuse—for a few years and then pass down to the next baby in the family-at-large. Not today. Today’s modern and earth-conscious mothers buy disposable diapers and either flush them down the toilet or toss them into a plastic bag to be disposed of in the garbage and, eventually, in the landfill.
    Think of how many babies use diapers today. Multiply this by the number of diapers each baby uses every day. You get the picture. Either our landfills or our septic systems are inundated daily, with soiled, disposable baby diapers.
    I’m not talking about baby shit. What I’m talking about is disposable diapers. They’re clogging our septic systems or filling our landfills—and I don’t care whether or not they’re made of biodegradable materials. With the old-fashioned way—when I was a baby consumer—nothing but the baby shit ever reached a septic system or a landfill. That’s what I mean. Back then, even as babies we
did more than our share to save the planet. Today, you only find that kind of concern in underdeveloped countries where they have yet to learn the pleasures of shopping at a Walmart or a CVS.
    My next recollection was of the milkman—Elmhurst Dairy’s wagon driver, Hugo, and Fritz, his horse. Every day, my mother would leave milk and cream bottles—bottles, not plasticized cartons—outside the back door of our house, with the appropriate coupons stuck in their necks. Hugo would arrive in the Elmhurst Dairy truck drawn by Fritz, his chestnut Belgian. Hugo would replace the empty bottles with full ones, prepaid for with the coupons left in the necks of the empty bottles by my mother. All the milk and cream bottles were reused until they were chipped or broken.
    Today, my wife drives to the supermarket to buy milk and cream in disposable plasticized cartons. Where do these plasticized cartons end up? I’ll tell you: in the garbage with the disposable baby diapers. Since Americans are a nation of milk drinkers—even adult men—you can imagine how many plasticized milk and cream cartons are disposed of daily. And think of the gasoline that is consumed in driving to, and from, the supermarket.
    Okay, Fritz would shit from time to time. When you have to go, you go, especially if you’re a horse. But a little manure is nothing when compared to the consumption of gasoline and its by-product, air pollution, just to purchase milk and cream!
    And you tell me we haven’t done our fair share to save the planet?
    Let me ask you, have you even handled a needle to sew? And thread? Have you ever darned a sock? No, darn is not a Victorian swear word. You probably don’t even know what I’m talking about, but when I was growing up, my mother darned my socks when they had holes. Even today, I darn my socks and my shirts and my sweaters. My wife is like you. She thinks I’m cheap—or crazy, or both! I tell her I’m conserving resources and honoring my socks. That sends her into a frenzy and a need to call my mother, to tell my mother that she raised a crazy cheapskate for a son. I’m surprised my wife hasn’t yet blamed Mitzi!
    Tell me, what do you do? Throw your holey socks in the garbage? It’s not worth mending a sock, you say? Well, I say it is. As Americans, how many socks do you think we collectively throw in the garbage every day? These socks—added to the plasticized milk and cream cartons and the disposable baby diapers—are filling up our landfills. And you tell me that I haven’t done my fair share to save this planet?
    And ladies—in case you feel I’ve neglected you—let me ask you what you do with your nylon stockings and pantyhose that always appear to be getting runs, holes, or tearing? My mother would cut her old, torn nylon stockings—they didn’t have pantyhose then—and stuff them into home-knitted animal toys for me and dolls for my sisters. No Landfills for my mother’s old and torn nylon stockings. And my parents didn’t need to purchase as many toys for us—no Toys ‘r Us or FAO Schwartz for us! Add your nylons and pantyhose to your husband’s socks, to the countless plasticized milk and cream cartons, and to your babies’ disposable diapers you throw in the garbage on a daily basis—to fill our landfills—and now you tell me who’s making an effort to save the planet?
    And sonny, I haven’t forgotten you. You’re a chip off of the old block. What do you do in college for textbooks? I bet you buy new ones every year. And what do you do when you finish the semester? Into the garbage—with your mother’s nylon stockings and pantyhose, your father’s socks, your baby sister’s disposable diapers, and all the plasticized milk and cream cartons whose contents have washed down countless Betty Crocker chocolate cakes.
    Well, now you’ve got me in a sweat; I’m all worked up. Let’s get really personal and hit below the belt. How about those outsized household appliances that eat up energy faster than your dog eats its Purina chow? Have you ever had the local electrical utility company perform an audit on the electrical usage of all those appliances, especially on your Texas-size refrigerator? I dare you to!
    I did. I phoned my electrical coop and made an appointment to have them audit all my household appliances and other electrical uses. Why? Because I wanted to know which ones were adding unnecessarily to this country’s balance of trade deficit. I wanted to do my share in reducing our energy reliance on OPEC. When the audit confirmed my suspicions, I turned off the juice. That’s right. I pulled the plug—or in my case, the plugs. Ones that I wasn’t using—like the jacuzzi in a bathroom on the second floor of my home—I switched off the juice in the electrical panel. Others were replaced with more electricity-efficient appliances. When my electrical bill arrived the following month, guess what? I owed the coop almost 40% less than the same month of the previous year.
    How many of us are haphazard in our use of electricity, gas, or oil? They’re there; they’re plentiful; they’re relatively cheap so why not consume them without forethought? But guess again. Soon they won’t be there—plentiful and cheap—unless you turn off the juice and replace all those electricity-guzzling appliances with energy-efficient ones. Add your inefficient use of energy with your son’s obsolete university textbooks, your husband’s holey socks, your wife’s torn nylons and pantyhose, your household’s discarded plasticized milk and cream cartons, and your babies’ disposable diapers.
    Now I’m going to mention just a small item, one that really is insignificant on its own but if you use your imagination and extrapolate a little, you’ll see what I mean. Take the ordinary tea bag, the kind you use daily—that is, if you drink tea. How many pots of tea has that tea bag been dunked in before being discarded? 20? 15? 10? 5? 2? Once? Not one of you will tell me that you reuse tea bags. I bet none of you set aside your used tea bag—like your table napkin—to be used again at your next meal, or as mulch in your garden.
    In a short story by O. Henry, the heroine reuses her tea bags 49 times. Exaggerated? Maybe. Ecologically sound? Definitely. Manufacturers of tea bags probably don’t make them like they used to—in the days of O. Henry’s heroine—but there’s still more than a single infusion to the tea bags manufactured today, and if there isn’t, there ought to be and we should, as consumers, demand more. We just don’t bother. We throw the used—but still usable—tea bag in the garbage, to join the wasted energy, the obsolete college textbooks, the holey socks, the torn nylons and pantyhose, the discarded plasticized milk and cream cartons, and the disposable diapers.
    Am I getting through yet?
    Another insignificant item, but one that I find particularly irksome, is the bread that is thrown out in restaurants. Why does every diner—whether he or she wants it or not—have to have a basket of bread? As a restaurant owner myself, it is sufficiently troubling to throw out uneaten food, but bread? Well, bread’s totally different story. Perhaps it’s my background. For my family, bread was the staple food, to be revered like potatoes for the Irish and vodka for the Russians. To waste bread was considered a sin.
    You may ask, why give a basket of bread to every table? Why not first ask if they want bread? Why? Because in America it’s expected, and if you don’t meet diners’ expectations—whether it be the reception when they enter, the food you serve, their fellow diners at neighboring tables, or the mandatory basket of bread even though the bread, or most of it, is left untouched—diners will
complain. So, there you are, at the end of service, throwing out most of the bread served that day into the landfill together with the used-only-once tea bags, the wasted energy, the obsolete college textbooks, the holey socks, the torn nylons and pantyhose, the discarded plasticized milk and cream
cartons, and the disposable diapers.
    I want you to weep for all the hotel and motel owners. They offer free bars of soap in every room—a fresh bar every night. Think of all those rooms after the guests—you in particular—have showered or bathed with a brand-new bar of soap—the same bar of soap that will be trashed the following morning by the efficient chambermaid. Why not wrap your somewhat used bar of soap and
bring it home, to be reused at the gym when you shower there? No, it’s not stealing and it’s not being petty or cheap. The soap is still usable—it’s been used barely once; the insignia of the hotel or motel is still visible on its surface. Why should it be allowed it to join the uneaten bread from the restaurants, the once-used tea bags, the obsolete college textbooks, the wasted energy, the holey socks, the torn nylons and pantyhose, the discarded plasticized milk and cream cartons, and the disposable baby diapers in what quickly becoming the scarcest of all resources—the landfill?
    I’m going to move on to something really esoteric: water. How many of you conserve water? I mean, really make an effort to conserve? And I don’t count the times the authorities have placed into effect edicts limiting or forbidding its use. Do you save the water in which you boil vegetables, to water your plants? I wouldn’t expect you to save the bathtub water—those of you who take baths, that is—to be used to flush your toilets, although it works, as I can attest from my experience in Bhutan. Turn on the tap for a glass of water, drink a few sips and where does the rest go? Down the drain, to join the slightly used bar of hotel soap, the uneaten restaurant bread, the once-used tea bags, the wasted energy, the obsolete college textbooks, the holey socks, the torn nylons and pantyhose, the discarded plasticized milk and cream cartons, and the disposable baby diapers—to the rapidly filling landfill.
    Now I’ll give you one more example, and then I’ll rest my case. Ex-husbands, ex-wives, former boyfriends, and former girlfriends. How many of us ever, EVER, look up an ex-, let alone go on a date or even reconnect with a former significant other? Don’t all raise your hands at the same time, please.
    Why do we waste our energy on making new friends, having relationships with people we hardly know, have a hard time getting to know, and in whom we spend energy and financial resources that, as we get older, become more and more scarce, when we have a resource that is known, tried, and with whom we have a history, and who would probably be willing to go Dutch, too?
    In my family, we recycle ex’s. My father’s first wife married his first cousin. His second wife—my mother—was his uncle’s niece on his uncle’s wife’s side. Another cousin married five times, numbers two and three being the same woman. And my aunt married her sister’s husband after her sister died. Everyone comes to family reunions and many have dated, and/or married, at least one other member of the family. None, to my knowledge, have ever written a letter to Ann Landers or to Abigail Van Buren.
    I rest my case. In the past, people used cotton diapers, drank milk and cream out of reusable glass bottles, stuffed hand-made animal toys and dolls with torn or ripped nylon stockings, darned the holes in their socks, purchased—and then resold—used college textbooks, re-used tea bags until no taste was detected—even in fiction, waiters and waitresses asked diners if they wanted bread and gave them only a minimum, hotel and motel patrons took the complimentary bars of soap home after their stay to be used at their gyms, people watered their plants with recycled water, purchased energy-efficient appliances, and encouraged the sharing of former wives, husbands, girlfriends, and boyfriends,
with other family members.
    Tell me, honestly, what are you doing, today, to save the planet?

E.P. Lande was born in Montreal, but has lived most of his life in the south of France and Vermont, where he now lives with his partner, writing and caring for more than 100 animals, many of which are rescues. Previously, he taught at l’Université d’Ottawa where he served as Vice-Dean of his faculty, and he has owned and managed country inns and free-standing restaurants. Recently, his stories have been accepted by more than twenty journals including Bewildering Stories, Archtype and Literally Stories.