Green Living

“ Until a man duplicates a blade of grass, Nature
can laugh at his so-called scientific knowledge.
Remedies from chemicals will never stand in
favourable comparison with the products of
Nature, the living cell of a plant, the final result of
the rays of the sun, the Mother of all life."

Thomas Alva Edison

You wake to the shrill wail of your alarm clock and, upon slapping the silencer button, stagger to the bathroom with a yawn. You switch on the compact fluorescent lamp, squeeze some toothpaste onto your worn-out toothbrush, brush your teeth absent-mindedly, gargle with tap water, and throw the toothbrush into the recycle bin. A turn of the lever propels down from the shower the exact amount of cold water needed to refresh your enervated body.

All towelled up, looking spiffy in your organic cotton suit and ready to face the world, you begin your walk to work. The road is bustling with cyclists wheezing by, and the only pile-up you might come across involves two entangled bicycles and their riders bickering, their arms and legs suffering minor bruises. Occasionally, a hybrid electric car or two speed by.

Your office building is an engineering commonplace that is lighted, heated and cooled by solar panels; constructed from salvaged and refurbished building materials; and captures, recycles and reuses its wastewater. Upon reaching your desk, you switch on your computer, the testimony bearer of your professional diligence (paperwork is history as all work processes has become digital). Lunch is in-house, and today’s menu is either fair-trade chicken with sweet potatoes from the office’s rooftop garden or organic Ravioli and coffee with good karma.

You are sliding the chair in at 5pm sharp in accordance with the law that requires all corporate buildings to do so to reduce their demand from the power grid. On your walk home, you drop by the grocer’s with your reusable grocery bag. You’ve already had the evening’s entertainment planned: a romantic movie on your organic light-emitting diode television set to be watched with some friends who will be coming over and bringing dinner. Your neighbours are pottering about their vegetable garden as you slide the key into the door. Home sweet home.

The above is an account of what green living in a Utopian setting would be like. It ought to happen not only at a personal level but corporate and national as well. A bit extreme, no doubt, but not impossibly far-fetched. Dauntless individuals are making “greener” choices, influencing public perception; laws are being changed to advance the environmental cause; even technologies are being tweaked to be more friendly to the environment. ~ Seth Tan

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