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PrintPart IV Going green. What will it take?
Making green a personal choice.
By making green a personal choice
Ultimately, for the city to become sustainable, there will have to be more buy-in from the general population and active participation at an individual level, Griffin concedes. Bad habits or indifferent attitudes will have to change. Younger generations already are living greener than their parents, and older generations have begun to see the wisdom in leaving a better city and better environment behind for their descendants.
“People need to become more aware of their consuming habits,” Griffin says. “If people become more conscious of that, we’ll be less of a throwaway society. Right now, about 99 percent of what one person buys in six months ends up in a landfill. That is not sustainable.”
For Griffin and others interviewed in this story, Tulsa is gradually becoming more open-minded about sustainability and moving beyond partisan political identification with the issue.
“This is something that now transcends politics,” Griffin says. “Tulsa is moving in the right direction. There is plenty of room for improvement, and we can’t be like Portland or the Bay Area or Seattle.
“We need some patience. We’re creating behavioral changes, and that doesn’t happen overnight.”
