What I’ve Learned

My interest in natural systems began with Scouting. I was born here in Hollywood, but I went to grade school on Long Island (New York). There are some beautiful areas out there. There certainly were in the mid-1950s. I was a Boy Scout and had the opportunity to go out to some fairly wild and scenic places. I think most people who’ve had that kind of experience at a young age have some profound respect for flora and fauna. That set the stage for what was to follow.

I came back to California for high school and college. What got my attention about one environmental problem was money. Money usually gets anybody’s attention. In the mid-1960s, I was deprived of a fair amount of cash flow. My dad and I liked to drink soda. My lot in life was (to be) in charge of all the bottle returns for the house. I got two cents apiece from the bottles--a few dollars a week. Suddenly, that money was gone because they had these new-fangled things called no-deposit, no-return bottles. I was shocked at the loss. That was a fair amount of money (then).

But I got to thinking and I remember going out to the trash can and looking at all the stuff--bottles, a broom handle, bags of grocery (scraps)--all these different materials--wood, metal, glass, cloth--taken from the earth in one form or another now thrown into this big salad in a trash can. And I remember going to ask my dad what happens to all this stuff? I was curious about how things really worked, what the nuts and bolts were. My dad said they put it in a garbage dump. He said there’s plenty of space, plenty of land for that, really still kind of the Wild West in that way. That didn’t ring true; (but) I wasn’t by any means an environmental activist at age 16. These things happen in increments.

But around age 20 I was primed and ready. I heard of a group called Friends of the Earth. I started getting their magazine. I thought, well, I’m not going to be part of the problem; I’m going to be part of the solution. That’s one good thing I got from my conservative, Republican dad. I’m a liberal Democrat, but I really admired him because I don’t remember him talking much about what he was going to do; he would always tell you what he had done. He wasn’t big on talk. Right away I started recycling, driving an electric car, buying biodegradable detergents, and composting.

Our greatest vote is not necessarily in the voting booth; (it’s) how we purchase things. We vote in the supermarket aisles, in the discount stores and on the showroom floors. If we want to have real impact on how business is done in Los Angeles and in this country I believe it’s with our roles as consumers. Many people complain about hazardous waste sites; and they should and I’m out there with them protesting. But the worst hazardous waste site is not near people’s homes. It’s under their sinks. People buy products that make whiter whites and brighter brights and spot removers that work in an instant. There’s a price to be paid for that. As consumers, we must guide corporate America in their role and our role in making all this toxic material.

We don’t control it all; but we control a great deal more of it than people think.