They say the grass is always greener on the other side.  When it comes to living in Europe, it seems everything has the potential to be greener than the United States.  Part of that is due to Europe being significantly smaller and more densely populated than the United States, and some of it is due to aggressive European policies encouraging the reduction of pollution and waste.  Here are 7 aspects of Euro life that Tree Hugger would want to import to the States.

One of the things that they recommend, multiple use bottles and the bottle deposit, used to be a big part of American life.  Back in the day, glass soda bottles used to be worth money.  Not to collectors or high speed photography enthusiasts, but to the companies themselves, who would clean and reuse the containers.  Plastic bottles are much easier, cheaper, and probably cleaner (germ-wise) to produce and discard, but several states have bottle deposit laws to encourage returning the containers to the store for recycling.

Forcing people to do something, even for a good reason, usually never works.  The best way to get habits to change is to give people encouragement (or money, in this case) to change habits; in other words offer the carrot, not the stick.  Still, a high speed rail system would be pretty nice for traveling cheaply.

Tags: European culture, Europe versus America, sustainability, green lifestyle, recycling, conservation

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