Like
many couples, my husband Ted and I cycle through the same arguments on a
semi-regular basis. Once a month we bicker about the state of chaos in
the children’s bedrooms. At least twice a week, we squabble over whose
turn it is to wake up with the perpetually early-riser. And without
fail, we disagree biweekly about our moral duties towards the
environment.
For
example, my purchase of a SodaStream soda maker resulted in an initial
ten-minute row that continued for eight weeks. Apparently, Ted just
couldn’t seem to understand the importance of bottle reusage. At first
he would openly mourn for the old cases of Crystal Geyser: “It just
doesn’t taste the same. I miss the lime flavor.” Even when I offered to
keep a steady supply of citrus on hand, he still moaned about the
ugliness of the carbonating vessel. We have been drinking this
environmentally-friendly soda water since August and he still refuses to
learn how to operate the push-button fountain.
Our
environmental disputes typically involve garbage in one way or another.
On the rare occasions that I cook dinner, I usually make a big salad-
it’s my no-brainer culinary staple. As anyone who has every chopped
vegetables knows, salads produce a great quantity of leftover food waste
– far too much for the half-gallon stainless steel compost pail that I
keep beneath the kitchen sink. And, God forbid I would even think of
putting this waste in the black landfill bin (my neighbors would think
that we are monsters that use aerosol spray cans as toddler toys).
Therefore, I use a brown paper grocery bag to collect the remnants.
Unfortunately, this bag rarely makes a timely exit to the green compost
bin in the garage. After a day or so of it left decomposing on the
granite countertop, Ted simply throws it in the garbage. He just doesn’t
get my foresight – I was planning on “cooking” another meal sometime
relatively soon.
Our
most common ongoing debate involves recycling. In spite of all my
coaching, which Ted reads as lecturing, he refuses to recycle. I find
plastic bottles, paper-towel rolls and kids’ artwork in the garbage
almost daily. Consequently, I have begun teaching the children a new
game called “Sort Daddy’s Trash.” The girls and I are constantly picking
recyclable items out of the black landfill bin and depositing them in
their proper resting place. I am even teaching them to master the heavy
sigh while doing so. “It’s for effect,” I explain. He doesn’t find it
amusing.
It’s
really not that my husband is some kind of ogre who tosses garbage out
his car window; he does drive a hybrid, after all. He is, however, just
plain lazy. I wish that there were a more eloquent way to describe this
behavior, but I’m calling this spade a spade. I know that Ted believes
in global warming and the dangers of climate change. He just doesn’t
believe that composting his take-out container is going to make a
significant difference.
That
said, he does support the environment through his wallet. He would
happily purchase carbon offsets to compensate for all of his green
transgressions – a few years back he bought me a TerraPass for
Valentine’s Day. Still, I would like to convince him to turn off the
water while brushing his teeth.