By Debra Becker

 

My name is Debby and it’s been sixty days since I used my last paper towel (to clean up my Grey Goose Vodka Martini spill).

 

I learned that paper towel consumption is depleting the Amazon rain forests. I realized that I had a paper towel addiction and the only way out was to quit -- cold turkey.

           

My eco-problems are not limited to paper towels.

           

At a time when people are reporting that climate change has driven them to seek professional counseling for their anxiety over glacial melting and drowning polar bears, I, too, suffer from green guilt for my personal Sasquatch-size environmental footprint.

           

My many sins include, but are not limited to: driving an SUV, living on more square footage than is required to sustain life, heating said square footage with oil, thereby directly contributing to America’s dependence on foreign same, abusing electricity to run a rarely used hot tub, ownership of large appliances including the forbidden extra beer fridge in the garage.

           

There’s more.

 

I have a past.

           

The reason why I have to do what I can to help protect the environment from people like me is that I caused the destruction of the Chesapeake Bay in the late 1970s. Each summer, my uncle used to take my six savage cousins and me with him boating on Maryland’s piece of the Chesapeake Bay.

 

We were eco-devils. “Uncle Bob, where should we throw our Coke cans?”

           

“Throw ‘em in the drink!”

 

“In the what?”

 

“Throw it over the side. In the water. Just throw it in!”

 

“What about the pop tops?”

 

“Throw them in, too!”

 

Seeing how much fun it was to throw stuff in the water, we would run around the boat looking for anything else we could toss overboard. Five minutes later, we’d drop anchor to swim with our trash.

 

When Uncle Bob changed the oil in one of the boat’s three engines, we’d fight over who got to pour the oil on the water. It was fun to watch the rainbow slick ripple on the waves.

 

Later, at the marina beach we’d sit on the oily sand, drinking sodas and eating candy, leaving our trash for the housekeeper waves to carry out to sea.

 

After I grew up and moved away, the Chesapeake Bay recovered.

           

Eventually I moved to Texas, where trash is king and is picked up twice weekly! My neighborhood actually voted to pay more for trash pick up so they wouldn’t have to bother with recycling.

 

A concerned neighbor led her own recycling campaign and that’s when my conversion started. Our neighborhood split between left wing, liberal, godless, lawless, communist recyclers and right wing, conservative, right-to-refuse-recycling nonbelievers. That square green bucket on the curb with the big triangle on the side, filled with Coke and Bud Light cans, marked us – just like the color blue marks losers on the political map.

           

My eco-consciousness awakened when we moved to Canada where our new neighbors put out one thirteen-gallon kitchen trash bag per week. Some put out less.

           

We looked like the Ugly Americans the first time we put out two oversized bins with recycling piled on the side in a cardboard box. Our polite but preachy Canadian neighbors left us a note: “We sort our recyclables at the appropriate stations around town.”

           

Oops.

           

But even Americans from Texas can be trained. Soon we were experts at sorting our cardboard from newspaper, milk cartons from plastic jugs. Each trip to the recycling station brought us closer to Mother Earth.

           

Since then I’ve converted most of my light bulbs to compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs), thereby using 60 percent less energy (except in my dining room where the CFLs make my ecologically-named Ralph Lauren Marsh Grass paint look too gray). I keep my thermostat between 65 and 68 in the winter. I wash clothes in cold water, but I cannot go back to hanging clothes on the line. You have to draw the line somewhere.

           

Although my guilt is green, it isn’t green enough to stop me from wanting a Shelby Mustang Cobra muscle car instead of a hybrid. Maybe the hybrid comes with a Martini.

 

Debra Baer Becker is a freelance writer who lives in Portland, ME and is interested in environmental issues. You can contact her at dbbecker2@yahoo.com.