Mr. Anti-Green Becomes the Next Laurie David

Posted on April 17, 2008 at 12:45 p.m. by Jill.

Jay Dandy, the person that up until now I’ve thought of as my least green friend, the most indoorsy of all my acquaintances, stopped by my house yesterday evening.

“I have something for you,” he announced.

“Hello to you, too.”

“Hold out your hands.” He unzipped his jacket and dug into the front pocket of his jeans, ready to pull out my gift. “No, no. You need both hands. Cup them together.”

A fistful of double AA batteries dropped into my outstretched hands. “I was hoping for M&Ms.”

Jay shoved his hand back into his jeans and pulled out and deposited another shower of batteries. “Keep your hands right there.”

Load after load of batteries, mostly small ones but with a few jumbo C and D’s thrown in, were loaded into my hands, so many they started to fall onto the floor.

It turned out that this was six months' worth of the Dandy-Weber household’s batteries, and that ever since Jay’s last visit to the Nature Museum with his kids, he’s been saving batteries. He noticed the battery recycling tube in the museum vestibule and has been collecting them ever since.

Not only has Jay been saving batteries to recycle—or actually, to be more specific, for me to recycle for him—he’s been recycling everything in his household. When I asked him how he got to be so green all of a sudden, he said, “It’s not recent. I’ve been changing without your realizing. You just have me stuck in your mind. I’ve been recycling for years now. I even pack back up those toner cartridges and mail them in.”

“Why, though? What changed? When?” I wondered how I missed the fact that this friend of my husband’s and mine from college was no longer Mr. Anti-Green.

There’s some kind of lesson in here about trying to see people in this moment, rather than keeping them pigeonholed as the person they were 20 years ago. Possibly there’s also a cultural message in the fact that someone who a decade ago wouldn’t have been caught dead recycling has caught the bug.

Later, we had a whole conversation about reusable batteries. Jay likes his wireless keyboard and wireless mouse because it keeps his whole desk clean. (At least his tidiness hasn’t changed.) These two tools are his biggest battery hogs, much more than his kids’ various toys. He says the reusable batteries wear out too quickly for his taste, though he does use them elsewhere.

So if anyone reading this has a battery charger and a brand of reusables that they believe to be long-lasting, please post it here.

It could save me from having another bag full of 47 batteries to bring into work again six months from now.