Green. Today this is the password to label everything that concerns the environment and what is called “eco-friendly”. Let’s be clear: the environment and its protection are very important values. Precisely for this reason it makes no sense to call them with a term of another language, which by the way, tells a color that we also have in Italy. Indeed, we have it in our flag. And then “green” wants to tell a world that we already had well before the arrival of English in our land. And that was much more genuine.
When no one used the word green…
When none of our grandparents knew what the word “green” means, however, some things happened:
– People used to walk. Even if there were already cars, the rule to move, even in the city, was: to walk. Doing several miles a day was normal for everyone. Today, that we are “green”, we take the car to go visit the neighbor.
– People made the vegetable garden. In every country house someone from the family took the trouble to grow vegetables for the family. There was no concept of “bio”. They ate the dirty vegetables of the earth they had hoed.
– Recycling was the norm: Children “inherited” clothes, shoes and games of the older brothers and with a single batch of objects three generations of children were raised. Today that we “recycle” we have only one child per couple but we consume more objects than a family once did in three entire generations.
– People were in contact with nature. Anyone, from an early age, used to know the scent of trees, the light of the sea. Nature was a teacher of sensoriality and life. Today we are chasing the smell of concrete.
– People knew animals. In the farmyards of the countryside many families had chickens, dogs, cows, some even horses. People lived in close contact with animals, they did not have a theoretical knowledge through a documentary. Today the only animal we interact with is the dog that we keep at home and that we treat like a child.
And we didn’t call “green” all this.