Environmental (Mental?) Millennials
Lately I have been so amused with my own environmental consciousness. Our parents may be less amused. Why am I constantly being charged 10 cents for a bag? Why do people keep asking whether I need a bag, when it’s obvious I need a bag? I just bought six magazines and a grapefruit, yes, I need a bag. Thank you.
It amuses me, at a campaign event for a local candidate, when I’m offered two bottles of water. There are two of us, my boyfriend and I. First I say, “Yes, two would be fantastic, thank you.” Then I think, but what about the landfills? I turn to my partner and say, “Do you really need your own bottle of water?” To which he immediately replies, “No, we can share.”
I turn back and say, “Actually, just one, please.” I feel like I’m making good trouble. The volunteer had already grabbed two bottles from the fridge. Now she has to go to the trouble to put one back. All because of environmental consciousness.
I once overheard two women in a coffee shop opt to share a single paper cup. One intended to bring water for both of them, and the instant she saw paper cups, she turned to her friend and said, “Should we just share one?” It killed me. When they saw the glasses weren’t glasses but dead tree products, their instinct changed. Their instinct became to share one.
It’s a good thing that this generation has an obsessive environmental consciousness. Sure, that one extra water bottle isn’t going to doom the earth to its tragic fate any faster than it’s already hurtling that direction. But two is twice as many as One. Halving the amount of waste that goes to landfills isn’t a bad idea.
The obsession means we’re thinking about it daily. Moment to moment. Being constantly conscious of landfills and recycling might just be a planet-saving habit to form.
The next generation will be even better. I bet they refuse to print their homework assignments. Why isn’t this field trip form available on Dropbox or Google Drive? You can find my cumulative exam thesis in the Cloud, ma’am.
The important thing is for each generation to develop better consciousness.
About those Baby Boomers, though. I don’t know what to do about those Baby Boomers. We stand on their shoulders. They taught us to recycle. Millennials did not come up with the Reduce, Re-use, Recycle jingle. We saw it as toddlers on a commercial featuring puppets in the 90s.
Millennials will be the generation to embrace bringing our own totes and grocery bags, carrying backpacks filled with mason jars and reusable veggie bags to bulk stores to fill our own containers, but I didn’t introduce the plastic bag tax. My representatives came up with that. There are Boomers who embrace environmentalism, and Boomers who were at its forefront.
What to do about the ones who aren’t? They have fair criticisms. Recycling isn’t a hundred percent efficient, right? It’s perfectly rational to complain that reusable grocery bags aren’t exactly the most hygienic. When they go grocery shopping to stock up on three weeks of food for four children and two adults, they need sixteen bags, double bags. They don’t want to pay for every single one.
What to do about these differing habits, needs, and lifestyles?
The dilemma of waste comes up for me as a writer often. So very often.
Paper.
I was recently invited to workshop my entire novel with a small group. It’s a lovely opportunity. My novel is 300+ pages, and I’ve been asked to bring it on Thursday. I have been asked to bring copies for everyone in the group. There will be six other participants.
That’s 1800 pages. That’s almost 2000 pages. Okay, I can print on both sides. That’s only 900 pages. Nine hundred fucking pages. I’m supposed to print nine hundred pages next Thursday? I have a week to decide.
One week to make up my mind, do I print 900 pages? This is the girl who returned a second water bottle, like “I’m sure we won’t get thirsty in this hot, packed, small venue.” I bring my own bags to the grocery store. I walk everywhere. I have carried a stack of books six deep from bookstores because I felt too sheepish to ask. I have said (jokingly?) that my greatest contribution to the environment will be not having children. I’m not even that big a greenie! These are just instincts. The habits I’ve built.
I’ve had this printing problem before. Writing classes require printed homework every week. A writing group recommends that I print a copy for everyone. Around 20 people often attend. Sometimes the group is as small as 6 attendees. I won’t know ahead of time how many will show up — 6 or 26—until I arrive that night.
I will need to print enough for everybody, because trust me, you do not get good feedback on your writing if your workshop can’t see the words. It’s hard to hold on to a story you can’t see; it’s hard to catch little flaws or pick up on small delightful nuances that might depend on how the dialogue brackets the narration.
Or where the writer chooses to break a paragraph.
I need to print it. I need every participant in the workshop to have my pages in their hands. And invariably, these classes, workshops, and writing groups are led by and attended by my elders; the giants on whose shoulders I’m standing, no doubt, yet Boomers who say things like, “I’ve just never been able to edit a piece unless I print it out,” and “I really need a physical copy, like in the good old days of paper books and typewriters.”
And we embrace this sentiment, do we not, every time we turn up our noses at eReaders, saying, I just need to curl up with a real book. A book will always be a book to me. I prefer a physical copy I can feel in my hands. I just need a shelf full. Digital just isn’t the same.
Can’t we all just do this on Dropbox? Can’t we workshop writing on our iPads and laptops? Can’t we follow along with each other’s words on our phones?
I do love a pen and paper. I write by hand in a notebook. Scratch that, I have a dozen notebooks. I write by hand in one notebook for each of a dozen projects I’m working on. Maybe that’s my vice. Maybe I’m a hypocrite. The words just flow differently when handwritten. I do understand the benefits of writing notes in the margins of a budding writer’s lines, of drawing brackets around the words [they don’t know] they don’t need. Of doodling a smiley face under the comment, “This passage is lovely, but a little too longwinded.” To sign your name and spell out best wishes for publication in your own lovely calligraphy.
On the other hand, word processing software has its benefits too. You can lose a stack of pages on the bus, but the cloud is forever.
The highly intuitive track changes function on Word and Pages is marvelous; it allows one to make clunky suggestions and minor edits the author can easily accept or reject. With a click.
Rather than battling the space between the lines, on the margin, and perhaps, if you’re lucky, at the end of a short page or an empty back page, you can add as much space as you need to a Word document to compose lengthy, longwinded, wordy and possibly awkward responses to every writer.
Feel free to rant away in that comment box, because it will grow, and grow, and grow along with your multi-paragraph discourse. Or write directly on the document by making yourself a page all on your own, as if by magic, with no tree casualties.
We’re living in the perfect age for copy revision; it’s never been easier to type notes to let someone know that although their work needs work, they have the skillset to overcome any creative obstacle.
