Coax people to be green in Singapore

Straits Times 27 Nov 10;

I read Fiona Chan's article, Being Green Makes Me Blue (LifeStyle, Nov 21), with a wide smile on my face.

Getting people to be eco-conscious is like raising a child. It does not work when you say, 'No, you shouldn't!', without validating it with a reason. I far prefer coaxing people to do it.

I, too, have witnessed avid plastic bag-savers, who drive off in their gas-guzzling cars. What I do believe, however, is that each person can find at least one way to save the environment without any inconvenience to his lifestyle. In my household, we diligently reuse plastic bags and recycle materials.

We cannot dismiss how many of the recent natural disasters have got to do with the deterioration of our environment, which has caused new illnesses, homelessness, and the shortage of food, water and sanitation. I veer from the idea that saving the environment has become far too fashionable for its own good. Perhaps the media may portray it as such. The green message is clear, strong and relevant to our lives and one that we cannot ignore.

Jasmine L. Arika

The environment needs no saving and will thrive without us. Who we are really saving is ourselves and our loved ones. It would be myopic to think that the environment is the 'flavour of the decade'. Hypocritical celebrities and non-celebrities who choose to greenwash should not be associated with the ones who walk the talk.

Let us be objective and look at all the issues before we write off the environment as a frivolous, non-urgent topic. We need to�realise our limitations as individual environmentalists saving one plastic bag at a time, and acknowledge our great potential as consumers and citizen who can pressure corporations and the Government to do something on a much quicker and grander scale.

Olivia Choong

Being green makes me blue
Fiona Chan Straits Times 20 Nov 10;

I never thought I would say this, but of late I have come to appreciate the wisdom of Kermit the Frog.

Way before the world got caught up in a wave of environmentalist fervour, Kermit warned us all: It's not easy being green.

Everywhere you look these days, people are exhorting you to save the world. Mostly by condemning you if you don't.

Have you ever printed out a report? You might as well have taken an axe to a forest full of trees.

Do you use plastic bags? That's going to cost us about a hundred species of flora and fauna essential to global biodiversity.

Are you driving a car? Why don't you just load up a big cannon full of fireballs and aim it straight at Earth, that would be more efficient.

Greenies may see red at most daily activities, but for ordinary folk like me, being green can sometimes make you blue.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for having everyone do his or her part for the environment. And, of course, this starts at home.

To save energy, I turn off all the lights when I sleep at night. To save water, my husband sometimes wears the same pair of trousers for two weeks at a time.

'Laundry,' he intones in a self-satisfied manner in his three-day-old socks, 'is a barely necessary evil.'

We even go so far as to dutifully send our newspapers for recycling every fortnight. The fact that all we have to do is to put them outside our front door to be picked up is pure coincidence.

All this may take some effort, but hey, it's worth it as long as the world is going to be saved from an apocalyptic bonfire, right? I'm really glad that my great- grandchildren will get their chance to enjoy aerosol cans and plastic water bottles.

But it would be nice if, on the occasions that I do choose convenience over the environment, I'm not made to feel like some kind of super villain bent on destroying the world.

For instance - and I know this confession will send me straight to green hell, where all the trees have been replaced by fake trees and I have to pretend to water them for eternity - I don't take my own bags to supermarkets. Not even on Wednesdays.

Not only that, but I also sometimes ask for heavy objects to be bagged with - horrors - two plastic bags, just in case one breaks.

It gets worse. At work, I like to print things out rather than read them on the computer. Ironically, sometimes the pro-environment signature at the end of an e-mail - the one that says 'think before you print!' - makes the document spill over to an extra page, which I then crumple up and throw away, compounding my crime.

I also guiltily opt for paper bills rather than have them all sent electronically. I know, this is completely selfish of me: I'm saving my own eyesight at the expense of the Earth.

Similarly, I am never willing to fork out more for the organic version of any food. This is clearly evidence of my short-sighted tendency to protect my wallet rather than the environment.

Given my weakness of character, I always admire those true-blue environmentalists who practise what they preach.

I respect how they eschew motor vehicles and cycle to work, then forgo a shower in the name of saving water and spend the rest of the day sweatily triumphant about their tiny carbon footprint. I respect them, but I probably won't sit next to them.

Still, at least they're devout followers of their green doctrine. What I really don't get are those so-called environmental experts, or the numerous self-professed tree-hugger celebrities, who earnestly and self-righteously enjoin people to care more about the Earth - and then hop onto their privately chartered jets to the next green conference.

Or your everyday environmentalists, who insist on paying 10 cents for their plastic bags at the supermarket to save the world, only to pile all their groceries into the back of their monster sports utility vehicles before driving off.

All that said, I am probably no different from the green evangelists in one respect - I am making a mountain out of what is, effectively, a molehill.

There are plenty of other unsolved problems in this world: starving people, physically abused women, apathetic youth and bad grammar. Saving the planet just happens to be the flavour of the decade.

But precisely as greenies - or greenhorns, in my case - we�should not miss the wood for the trees. The environment is a problem, but it is one problem, and not one that can be solved by simply attending Greenpeace concerts and hugging oaks.

So let's not accuse one another of not being green enough when maybe what we are is too green: green with envy of others' carefree carbon emissions.