Going Green?

So have you noticed "green" is becoming annoyingly trendy? It seems like a phase that comes around every so often, but right now it is seriously ramped up. I think a lot of it is spin. For example, many companies are trying to cut back, so not sending you a printed statement, or having you put your groceries in your own bag instead of one they provide saves them a little bit of $$. And instead of saying sorry, not gonna do it, they say "Hey, go green!" and it sounds much more positive and PC.

This annoys me. Why? Because I actually like to take care of the environment and behave somewhat responsibly in that area. I hate seeing stuff get thrown away that could be recycled or reused and I want to be a good steward of everything God has blessed me with, including the land on which I live. But I don't like trendy. And I am stubborn. And I tend to worry about others passing judgement on me. I am inclined to not do something I might have done otherwise just because it is now the trendy thing to do. I don't want to buy some dopey reusable bag that every store under the sun is selling now - because every other person out there is buying them and I don't want to be lumped in with some of them.

Now, I don't drive a hybrid car, I don't compost, I don't eat organic foods or grow my own vegetables (they would die horrible, miserable deaths at my hand); I am no hard core activist. But I will carry my empty cans and bottles home with me if I am out and there is no where to recycle them. It pains me to be stuck in a situation where I have to throw one away. I "rescue" scrap paper and bring it home to be reused or recycled. I take things to the recycling center. I talk to my kids about the effects of all the development constantly popping up all around us. And I remind them that God made the world and we need to care of the world just as we would anything else He gave us.

I was talking with my mom the other day about global warming. Not going to start a debate about it here, because I am not educated enough on the topic to do so. But we talked about how much of that we thought was man-induced and if maybe some was just how God made the world. I wondered aloud if because God knew the earth only needed to be around x number of years that was built into the plan from the beginning. The Bible teaches that Heaven is going to last forever. I don't think it teaches the earth is going to last forever. No expert on End Times either, so that is probably all I should say about that.

That being said, I still think we should take care of the earth while we are here. When you hear "environmentalist", the connotation is often of left-wing radicals, conspiracy theories, and Al Gore. But I think we need to be environmentalists of our own breed, behaving responsibly, out of inner desire, not the desire to be "in". Opinions, anyone? Tips?

UPDATE: Get this - we came home from the Earth Day festival with...(drum roll)... four lovely (free) Walmart reuseable shopping bags. Walmart. I hate Walmart. Going to come up with some creative way to cover the big Walmart logo on the side. Oh, and flyers and brochures. The irony of Earth Day. All the paper. I hope people go home and recycle all the papers they were grabbing that they will never read!!