Now, given she had a conventional laser jet, this meant printing a page and then turning it upside down just in time so it prints right. And so, it took longer than it should have and I remember getting annoyed. And then, something went wrong. I can’t remember what but I think the paper got jammed.
At that point, I voiced my frustration about her slow process to which she pointed out that she was doing her bit to save the environment. And I remember smugly pointing out that the real wasting is in the industries and this is not helping.
While my irritation and smug-ness probably got the better of me, it doesn’t take away from the fact that I was very wrong. It does matter that we do our bit.
I thought about that incident the other day as I was taking my little ‘environment friendly’ shopping bag to the Waitrose next door for my weekend shopping. I paid 50p a few months back for this bag and I take it along every week and thus don’t use any plastic bags. And over time, I’ve always tried to minimize paper wasting by using the back side of printed pages for scribbles and notes. I have a stack of these sheets under my desk.
I still don’t think these little steps are going to change much in the grand scheme of things right this moment. The biggest users of paper and other such resources are still the massive corporations that I/we don’t control. But, therein lies the key. There will come a day when I/we will have influence on these ‘macro’ factors. Either that, or we will be the parents of those who will. And, if we have been schooled well in sustainability and responsible use, it will show. We are creatures of habit after all.
Doing our bit – I’ve realized it matters in more ways than we can imagine. We often have very deep learnings from times when we were wrong and made errors in what we said or did.
Why, then, are we taught to fear and abhor such moments?
We live. And we learn.
A Learning a Day 