Honourable senators, I read this the other day, and thought I would share it with you.

A young cashier snapped at an older woman that she should bring her grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment, saying, “Your generation didn’t care enough to save the environment for our generation.”

The old lady gave a firm stare and countered with:

Back then, we returned milk bottles, pop bottles and beer bottles. We sent them back to the plant to be washed, sterilized, and refilled, so we could use the same bottles over. They were recycled.

Grocery stores put our groceries in brown paper bags, which we reused for numerous things.

We walked upstairs because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throwaway kind.

We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine — wind and solar power did dry our clothes in our day.

Kids got hand-me-downs from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio in the house — not a TV in every room. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have machines to do everything for us.

When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded-up old newspapers to cushion it — not Styrofoam or bubble wrap.

Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power.

We got our exercise by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a plastic bottle. We refilled pens with ink and we replaced the razor blades instead of throwing away the whole razor.

Back then, people took the bus and kids rode their bikes instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets. We didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles in space just to find the nearest burger joint.

But the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing going.

The cashier stood there quietly. The old lady paused and then said to the young clerk:

You have a world of knowledge in that little device in your hand. Pity you just use it to gossip, take pictures and waste time. It would do you good to learn a bit of history.

Colleagues, history and context are always important.