It's Not Easy Being Green, Part 2

So, about that New Year's resolution to be greener. It's actually going great, better than expected really. No plastic; all cloth napkins; purchasing everything that's 100% post-consumer (trash bags, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.); cage-free eggs; dye-free, detergent-free, soap-free soap, the list goes on and on. I'm getting pretty dark green on my own here, thank you very much.

So then, I go on vacation. What is it about the vacation?

I tried, really I did. I brought my Seventh Generation toilet paper for everyone's bathroom, my organic-nothing-but-peanuts peanut butter, my cage-free chicken-love eggs, my 100% post-consumer trash bags, my organic 100% whole wheat bread. Really, see? I tried. I even hung a small grocery bag on the handle of the silverwear drawer denoting the "recycling bag." Not to be confused with the "garbage bag."

Some of them complied, other times I'm fishing Coke cans out of the "garbage" to place in the "recycling." I'm flinching when the plastic ziplocks are used to store food instead of tupperware. But in general I'm thinking this is going well. My greeness should be rubbing off.

Then, there appeared, seemingly out of nowhere....the bag of regular, white, sourdough bread. When we already had 2 loaves. What's going on here? Where they snubbing my organically grown, organically harvested, organically bagged, 100% whole wheat, tasty as soft cardboard bread? Is that what this was? A snub? Well.

And then, a day later, bacon shows up. Not the bacon I packed. I packed the nitrate-free, salt-free, uncured, pig-friendly, just-a-little-less-tasty bacon. But the regular, salty, nitraty, meanly-slaughtered pig bacon seems to be in the house now. Hmph. I was starting to get a message.

And if all this wasn't enough, at the end of the week, when all my "recycling" bags have been neatly tied, separately denoting the recycling, and placed out in the garage.... I find. only. garbage. containers. All that recycling. Nowhere to put it. Garbage. With a heavy heart, I lift the lid. And place in all my neatly tied, organically loved, ready-for-reuse recyclables into the garbage. Well, off to the land-fill with you.

What is a person to do? The greener I get, the more painful it is.