I can still hear my grandmother’s voice, “Don’t throw that away, that’s good garbage.”

Good garbage?

What she meant was organic matter. The way station for it was a cardboard milk carton on the kitchen counter, not the garbage pail. Next stop was the compost pile (however, no one said “composting”). Kitchen scraps, dried leaves, grass clippings, egg shells, coffee grinds all rotted and then went through a mulcher on the way to the vegetable garden. The garden soil was supplemented by manure, usually acquired at no cost from a horse track, and on a few occasions, chicken farms, with vile results.

Born in 1897 and 1903 respectively, they saved and re-used everything. They did not waste anything: electricity, oil, natural gas, water, time, or money. Nothing was wasted. A surplus of cucumbers or eggplant from the garden resulted in pickling, Born of modest means, they were still great conservers even when they did not have to to be. Watering the vegetable garden resulted in produce, and thus allowable. Watering the lawn, just a waste. They also took good care of anything they owned. More than 40 years after grandpa’s death, I still use the old garden tools he did not abuse. Overall, they made the most of their resources and saved throughout their lives. They operated at a surplus.

Their vegetable gardening took place in some of the less than agriculturally hospitable places in metropolitan New York. Perhaps romantically, I saw it as originating in the hills of the Campagnia, the land of their parents. But I was wrong. It turned out it was the WW2 “victory gardens” that got my grandfather going on this “hobby”. Nevertheless, I still believe it stuck for four decades due to his heritage.

Their attitude was admittedly hard on some of us at times, who saw them as stingy and stuck in their ways. To my grandfather, there were three ways of doing things: the right way, the hardest way to do it, and his way. Of course, they were all the same way. Rarely, he granted immunity. I remember being startled when he unexpectedly approved the use of a roller to paint a fence, “even though you will waste a lot.”

I am indebted to my brother for the observation that they were green. At the time he said this, some people were taking umbrage at the phrase: “reduce, re-use, recycle,” probably because it was linked to a government mandate. Of course, you did not have to tell grandma and grandpa to “reduce” because they never used too much; re-use, they were most likely already re-using it; or recycle, they did not know the term. Yet, they were probably better at it than you or I and it did not involve a twice monthly curbside pick-up.

I have thought a bit about why they were so green, although that phrase they would not know. But I think I understand. They were smart enough to know what many of us have never grasped. They knew that their resources and those of the world are one in the same.