Hannah Sung
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| Photo by Gabriel Steele |
We have an enemy in the house: plastic bags. I try not to bring them home, but they sneak in anyhow. I have reused the same ratty, flimsy plastic bag for weeks, sometimes carrying my lunch in it, sometimes wrapping it on my bike seat when grey skies threaten rain. I don’t have a lot of patience for disposable coffee cups or plastic water bottles, either. And, truth be told, I could seriously head-butt the person who thinks I want to buy free-range eggs encased in non-recyclable clear plastic.
What I don’t want to become, however, is that person who counts how many plastic bags the next person is stuffing at the grocery checkout: “That lady is double-bagging!” Nobody wants to hear the greener-than-thou rants of an eco-bully. Even if it’s well-intentioned, it’s smug. And being smug is unbecoming—like a bad outfit. You may as well pat your face with dirt and top your outfit with garlic earrings before heading out to a party. It’s people-repellent.
Ask my friend Cate* about eco-bullies and she’ll talk about a friendship that imploded under the heavy weight of such judgment. She had a high school friend who became more and more militant about environmentalism and they began to drift. Years went by. Cate invited her over. The conversation quickly turned to the topic of environmentalism. Not that anyone asked, but her friend declared, “I’m really not that hard core. If I was hard core about it, I wouldn’t set foot in this house.” Ouch. What is Miss Manners to do in that situation? Sweet Cate, who loves to compost and cycle to work, thought, “What a bitch.” And they never spoke again.
Point is, eco-bullies, including the tiny one in me, have got to go. And in their place? Eco-charmers. Anyone who has ever tried to coax a baby or boyfriend knows that bullying doesn’t get you anywhere. But charm will.
*Name has been changed.
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