Green For Green

I like recycling, I like composting, I like bagging my groceries with the mis-matched cloth bags I carry around (and the few cents I save). My main household cleaner? Vinegar. I love the smell of clothes fresh off the line. I don't litter and in fact will from time to time clean up other peoples litter. I am a big supporter of breastfeeding, home births, cloth diapers, and baby wearing. I prefer to be natural in pretty much every aspect from using garlic to draw out infections, to applying oils instead of lotions, to my pine cat litter. A few years ago these things earned me a label of hippie from some friends (ok the lack of bra, and infrequent showers may have played a part) so when the the cutely coined phrase "green" came out I was happy to shed my hippieness which gave some dreadlocked, patchouli scented, grass smoking, bell-bottom wearing connotations which were not really me, in exchange for it.

Now it's so hip to Go Green, Be Green, Green Living. Good grief people. How different are you living? Is recycling and cloth bags really that new of a concept? It seems as though a volcano has erupted and the lava spewing forth is some kind of green muck. Don't get me wrong I'm glad to see others enjoying some of these things that I have been for most of my life, but now I don't want to be stuck with this label either, the connotations are even worse. Because you see, I like to eat meat, I wear leather shoes, I don't buy into the global warming propaganda and get sick of hearing about it, nor do I believe that the world is over-populated.

So if I don't think I am saving our planet one cloth bag at a time, but I still want to be a wise and faithful steward of the area's I have dominion over what does that make me?

Perhaps I'll go back to being called a hippie, I kind of like dreadlocks now.