okay
so what do you think is the major cause
well i i definitely think it's our the cars we drive and
yeah
i think you know everyone has good intentions and and thinks well i should carpool and i will and but
that we just have so many different interests and so many different things we have to do it's it's a bother to have to pick somebody up and if you have a doctor's appointment or something and they have to get another ride home or
right
you have to arrange it's just a hassle and i guess we're not willing to do that
yeah
but that to me is probably the thing that needs to be done or to start using public
now do you live in a major city
Dallas Dallas area i live in Plano
in Dallas
okay
which is just a a suburb of of Dallas do you live in a major city
right
uh i live in Raleigh North Carolina
oh okay
and probably not quite as big as Dallas but uh
no
well myself i i go to Richardson which is a i teach school and so i don't commute that far it's only about four miles but
the majority of people that live in this area go into Dallas to work and and
when you if you go out on the freeway and you look you see almost every car is just one passenger
yeah
and our public transportation system's a joke so people just don't bother to take that because it's inconvenient we don't have any kind of a a train or uh you know anything like some of the big cities do
oh
um-hum
right
we're supposed to get one but it's you know way off in the future
way off
yeah
but
no it's just it
well i've found
the easiest way is to is to ride bikes in Raleigh anyway and
oh is that right
i used to live in Colorado and it was even more of a bigger deal there but
um
sure
i ride my bike everywhere in town well there i probably wouldn't ride it to the the opposite side of town but i can ride it to downtown with no problem at all
how large is Raleigh
it's about two hundred and fifty thousand
so it's pretty big yeah
uh the diameter of the city is probably it's got a belt line around it which is a a diameter of about ten twelve miles
uh-huh
and so you ride your bike to work and everything or aren't you oh well that's great
right which is about
three and a half four miles
see that's that isn't even i mean i'm not sure that a person even a percentage of of of people in the Dallas area ride bikes to work you know i just don't think they do i never see anybody
yeah
um-hum
um
another thing that that i think our my family's real conscious of is is is to stop using aerosol cans and you know uh you know get another find another way instead of
right
yeah that one so easy i don't know why people won't
you know the pump
i know it really is and
we just need not to buy the stuff and those businesses will have to change you know the corporations and so forth have to change if you don't buy it they're not going to make it so
yeah
yeah
yeah that is an easy one
yeah
but uh you know and i notice probably a lot of uh commercial pollution and
and factory pollution in Dallas you can see it some days it's really bad
yeah you can see it in Raleigh it's ugly
yeah it's yeah it's awful it's nothing like California where the smog is constant but it's still there and you know it
yeah
if we i think if we really realized how much we do breathe in that's unhealthy we would immediately do something about it but i don't think people realize how unhealthy the the air is
yeah
yeah that's what you said you're a school teacher
yes
um how much how how much education of air pollution and all that do you
well i think i don't see i only teach English and and uh but the science teacher i teach fifth grade and we're departmentalized and
okay
the science teacher does a really big unit on it and i think the kids are more informed than adults are i mean and
right
yeah i would i would agree with that because i've done
actually i've done some volunteer teaching on
on uh ecology and all that at at a middle school
uh-huh
uh-huh
and um
the the kids knew well the teacher the science teachers were pretty sharp too but the kids in general know more than adults do about it
uh-huh
they do they do and they and and i think that they are they care a little bit more and i think as adults we need to care because it's the the future for our kids and i
yeah
you know i mean my kids are much more aware than i was at their age about things like that and i think it's it's definitely has to be that
right
well it
probably at your age it wasn't a problem
no it really wasn't it wasn't a problem it i mean it probably i'm sure it was beginning to be a problem but people were just weren't
yeah
uh aware of it like they are today and i think that's where it has to start with the kids because it's going to be their world soon and i think it and and we're real big on you know Plano which is a small suburb of Dallas about a hundred thousand
yeah
um-hum
okay
um i think we're more than that about a hundred thirty thousand now but um they're really trying their best to start recycling and things like that that will
right
and we just we have separate garbage collections now for plastics and cans and newspaper and which i think is i mean that's that should be just a way of life for everybody you shouldn't even complain about it you should just do it
right
right
i think they ought to well the way it used to be was that you had you had to take your recycles to a special place
it should be the other way around where you have to take your non recyclables to a special place and then people would
uh-huh
that's true
would have an incentive
you're right you're right
yeah Raleigh has has curbside recycling which is really nice
well you know it just has to be when you consider the landfills we we're not going to have any soon and it's
yeah
it's ridiculous but the thing the quandary that i'm in is that that we had a great big article in in in the newspaper last week about i've been real big about going to to the store and asking for paper instead of plastic well
right
that is really controversial because some scientists you know f eel like plastic i mean paper is worse than plastic
it's just it's just a real um debate about which one is is the best really the best thing to do is to bring um you know a cloth bag yeah
yeah
yeah
your own bag
i do that sometimes but i i forget a lot
do you
yeah i see that's what i do too i forget and
and besides when i go to the store i have a family you know i i get maybe ten twelve bags of groceries and that would be a little a little expensive although you know i'm sure some
yeah
i think i i don't know i think the paper's still got to be better because
well the the major problem with paper usually is when they bleach it
the dioxins they just usually end up getting dumped into the water supply
um-hum
but um
the grocery bags with them being colored or being raw paper i don't
see that much of a problem as opposed to a petroleum product i mean tree trees can grow back
if if they're handled in the correct way but the petroleum products like plastic i mean they're going to run out of oil whatever they're going to do
yeah
um-hum
it doesn't grow
yes that's right that's right you're right
i mean that's that's where the main that's where i see that paper's got to be better
uh-huh
well you know and they say that
you know plastic is recyclable but not many people use them again you know
no it's and plastic like that is not a hundred percent recyclable it they lose a lot and it takes a lot of energy to do it
yeah that's true
sure sure
i think that you know i think that it's tremendous the research they're doing on all of this because i think we need to to know and be more aware of it so we can do some changing but
yeah
the majority of people are so lazy about it that they're not willing to to sacrifice a little to to make the world a better place and it's kind of sad because especially if you have children and because you know you want
yeah
your kids and their kids to to be able to
have a nice place to live yeah
be a part of a yeah a world that's halfway decent and you know just in my lifetime i've seen such a change in the environment and it's scary because by the time my kids have kids
and they're growing up it's going to be a completely different world you know and it's it's scary so
yeah
you know like i i know that i need to carpool and i don't and uh and i you rationalize and say well i only am four miles away and that it's no big deal and
um-hum
yeah
well you know but
i guess the the first step is to find a happy medium i mean
you could easily say well we should go back to living in caves
but no one's going to do that so i think you need to make compromises slowly enough people adjust to it
and uh
right right
not too slowly but
well you know just yeah just with with our thing in Plano it had when recycling garbage it hasn't
it hasn't been that long and it was just uh really an easy adjustment for most people but there was a few small percentage that griped and complained and wrote
yeah
you know letters to the editor and you know like it was some real great big deal inconvenience and
um
but it seems to me you should just be able to give up a little bit to make the world better but some people don't think that so
yeah
and some people don't and some people i think really believe and maybe they're rationalizing but they really believe that everybody's making a bigger deal out of the problem than it is
no way
yeah
and that and that it's right no way it's it's there and we've got to face it
i think they're not making a big enough deal about it
that's right i think in some cases they aren't
yeah
and i see i wonder how i wonder how much the laws
that Congress passed several years ago are really enforced as far as big companies and
yeah well i think there's a lot of violations that slip under the table
oh i think so too and i think that they're not fined the way they should be or they're they pay them off or whatever so they can get away with it
yeah
i i was born in Ohio and when um when i was young we did we did a lot of fishing and on Lake Erie and i i mean when i went back
um-hum
right
i just couldn't believe the difference it's just terrible the way it's polluted because of of big corporations that dump and you know and you just feel so bad because at one time it was a wonderful beautiful lake and now it's a mess
right
hum
i've i've never known it to be one so i guess i'm a little bit younger than you
yeah i when i was little my dad had a boat and we would go fishing on Lake Erie and it was beautiful
um-hum
and it's not beautiful anymore so and that's
um
