In the line at the store, the cashier told an older woman that she
should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for
the environment.
Ill go along each post when you started your green thing.
1. Thats a good point, and valid were not not lacking critical information. That is still done in Mexico, because bottles unfortunately are expensive to make in Mexico and it's cheaper to recycle, after all high potency cleaners and highly toxic chemicals (the fumes released into the atmosphere, mind you) are much cheaper to apply for cleaning then to run recycling centers. Recycling centers cost money, and they cost a lot.
However back to reality most bottles are recycled, from aluminum to glass bottles. They are just done so in a more hygienic fashion by actually heating the bottles up to the point of melting, meaning no bacteria or toxic fumes form cleaning chemicals.
http://earth911.com/recycling/glass/facts-about-glass-recycling/
But yes you are right, you guys were environmentally friendly.
2. You walked up the stairs painted with non environmentally (pre 1977), or how about toxic housing with abestos?
But yes you are right, you guys were environmentally friendly.
3. This is completely ignorant. If you look at charts you will see MPG ratings to be fairly flat when talking about say 1970s to today. Most cars have similar MPG as before. The thing that has changed is modern cars have less emissions (and less harmful ones at that) then older vehicles.
Cars from the old were actually far more environmentally hazardous due to the emissions.
Lastly yes we have 300 hp street cars but t's using a highly efficient engine using the same volume/cylinder as an 1980's car would with the same volume size and cylinder count but an older less efficient design (cylinder volume=Liters (2.3L or 3.3L) Cylinder count= 6 cylinders, 4 cylinders etc).
But yes you are right, you guys were environmentally friendly.
4. People still wash babies dippers, I was born in 1989 and my mother washed my diapers. We did not have the money for disposable dipers (they are EXPENSIVE). Even now a days parents have both disposable and cloth diapers, sometimes they can't afford disposables so we used cloths. This is stupidly irrelevant, this has to do more with economic viability then anything.
5. One TV... yes you are right but lets look at the numbers:
Energy efficiency has increased greatly just this decade alone from going from CRT to LCD, for example my 22" 1920x1080 e-IPS Dell u2211H uses merely 22 watts of power while my 19" CRT uses approximately 85 watts of power. No? Okay how about a 27" 40w tv vs a 42" LCD@around 110W (This CRT is from 1998 or 1999 ~ iirc Sony brand).
No okay lets talk REALLY old, like before CRT's.
If I recall correctly an older Tube TV would of been closer to around 300 Watts of power or more during their first introduction. These are averages:
http://www.oksolar.com/technical/consumption.html
Television, Color (Tube): 286w
Television, Color (Solid state): 175w
Television, B & W (Tube): 100w (small as hell)
Television, B & W (Solid State): 45w (small as hell)
Now adays most TV's use around 100W or less:
http://reviews.cnet.com/green-tech/tv-consumption-chart/
If you get down to it, you can get some really nice TV's that use under 60W of power while offering nearly 2x-4x the screen size from old TV's.
I think at 20w-60w we can afford to have multiple TV's and one large 100w television compared to just a single 286w for a single old Tube TV.
6. Fair enough I suppose. Good point. We do need to do more hand preparation, imo not for the environment but for our health.
7. And often saw broken stuff arrive at the house. Also you guys also didn't have anywhere near the same volume of freight going from one place to another. Hmm maybe newspaper companies should just become shipment padding companies to comply with the ways of old. Oh wait... you guys didnt have widely distributed recycling centers back then, wonder what happened to all the paper.

8. uhmm fair enough although I will saw my lawn mower may consume maybe but $8 of gas every once in a while. Maybe if you worked for 30 cents an hour (average back in the day), sure mowing the lawn was required. Although now a days that time we save mowing the lawn can be put to other tasks, like hey creating electric cars to make up for the gasoline we just used! Genius idea!
9. Provided you had a school near you to attend to, you are right

.... School buses, and cars helped bring kids far away from school to school. This is so silly, I swear.
10. Hmm we have relatives in Mexico living like that. Trust me much better to have those appliances you speak of. Saves time, and in the end saves energy and money.
11. Yeah you didnt have the pizza joint, nor the COUNTLESS medical achievements done through molecular folding computation, nor the power to defend a nation using Anti-RPG systems that compute trajectory/ minimize near by casualties, nor a limitless number of other important accomplishment, nor clean running water (sorry computers do that

)
Exactly wasteful people of old.