Comedy Corner: Soylent greenism

I am a contract worker, and recently I may have put my job in jeopardy. I found that I am not a very “green employee.”
It’s not that I refuse to go along with trying to save the environment. It is just that I am from the “it’s all about me” generation. My generation has a proclivity for convenience over conservation.
The other day, I was standing in front of the printer at work, and I realized that there is a laminated sign above it that reads something like this: “Since 2007 we here at this company have saved 417 trees, and tons and tons of paper, because we … (blah, blah, blah).”
Well, basically what it was saying was, please proofread your print jobs before printing so you will not waste paper, or we will have to hunt you down and kill you. Remember, your report is not as important as the tree that just sacrificed its life for your spreadsheet.
Well, I do tend to print first and proofread later.
Anyway, I have been quietly putting my mistakes in the confidential shredder box, hoping no one notices — except the security camera in the hallway. I swear, it actually moved downward the other day as my hand tossed the paper documents into the box. HAL?
I used to throw the mistakes in the recycle blue box at my desk, but I was afraid the green police would come by after work one night and check to see how much paper I was wasting. Has anyone ever mysteriously disappeared from work because of having their recycle box to full?
There is a community banquet I volunteer for that is held once a month in Felton that feeds close to 200 people. I have a friend on this committee who said there have been some concerns raised that we are using too much non-green material and wasting precious resources every time we have one of our dinners. So we stopped using Styrofoam last year and started using paper.
Someone asked if we could use real plates and metal utensils.
I said, “Excuse me, but if we start using real plates and metal utensils, how much time and water will it cost to clean up? If the people complaining want to clean up, then they can use the real stuff.”
Never heard from them again.
Yes, I believe we need to save the planet as much as possible. But buying an electric car and having to wait 10 hours to have it recharge will never happen for me. It is just too plain inconvenient.
Washing 200 plates and silverware for a once-a-month dinner is just not going to happen when it’s all-volunteer. That is reality folks. No mater how green we get, that’s what plastic forks and paper plates are made for.
There is being green and then there is being mucus green. Extremism — or, what I like to call it, MSGism (mucus soylent greenism). It just turns people off.
I did suggest we use the new silverware that was made out of plants which degrades in the landfills faster. Did you know, when you suck on a plant-made spoon, it tastes like raw pasta?
I wonder, if I boiled them, if could I could make spoons and meatballs.
Michael Larson is a 14-year resident of Felton and an aspiring comedy writer. He lives with his dog Blue. Contact him at mi***************@ya***.com.