GreenMark Public Relations®, Inc.

Karen Barnes at GreenBiz recently posed a very interesting article about Millenials (people between the ages of 18-24) and their habits and attitudes about being green. Here’s the link:

http://greenbiz.com/blog/2010/03/08/truth-about-millennials

Being on the older end of this age group (a ripened 24-year old), and the youngest team member at GreenMark PR, I feel I should weigh in on these impressions with some personal experience.To summarize, Barnes writes that attitudes outweigh habits, though the newest collective group into the “real-world” is generally positive towards adopting a greener lifestyle. True, true and true. Here’s another thing: practical cynicism. This is mostly a result of graduating high-school and college during an economic recession and hyper-partisan politics. Though I’ve grown up in Chicago, I currently live in a college town in Western Kentucky. It’s a beautiful, rural region. I am within a 15-minute drive from a large, well-attended national park. Public transportation is offered to the students, though many ride their bikes or walk (I walk to campus when the weather’s nice). There is no city-authorized recycling service, but we have some green entrepreneurs who will pick up your paper and plastic for a reasonable fee. The place I work during the day, the NPR-affiliate, WKMS, uses this service. So, there’s some context for the environment in which I live.

On the topic of green attitudes, almost everyone I’ve spoken with agrees that practical legislation must be passed, that drilling in national wildlife reserves is wrong, that solar and wind are the future of energy, that their next car will have some kind of fuel-efficiency or hybrid aspect, that they do at least something to conserve energy even if its as little as bringing their own canvas bags to the grocery store.The report suggests that attitudes outweigh behavior, or that young people will talk but not walk. I take some issue with the “walk” being weighed by our purchasing power. It’s true, people in this age bracket don’t have as much expendable income at the moment. But what’s also true, is that, given the financial circumstances of the country, Millenials are being led to give greater consideration to the route of their dollar.

I’ve written several times in this blog that being green doesn’t mean spending money on new cars and fancy light-bulbs. In truth, I drive a clunker. It’s a car almost 15 years old and the back end is busted. It drives like a bull out of the gate and, while I don’t drive it very far or very often, it’s not the greenest car on the road. But if I were to get a new car, a Prius hybrid, what then would happen to my still functional clunker? Would someone else drive it around? Would it sit and rust and leak chemicals in a junkyard? Buying a new car would not only be a huge expense, it would also not be the greenest option. Millenials are aware of this, despite the efforts of advertisers, who try very hard to convince you that you need to spend a little more to save the planet.

Many of the young people I know are either vegetarian or have heard Michael Pollan speak for five minutes and realize that Americans eat way too much meat. This is an area of being green that is both intriguing and off-putting to many. In my own joy of cooking, I’ve discovered that my best recipes just so happen to be vegetarian ones (I make a mean curry). But I’m not above an occasional hamburger, either. We are very much aware of the obesity epidemic, large portion sizes and attributed diseases. Being aware is the first step, doing something about it is more or less optional, but I give this time.Okay, so I work for GreenMark PR, I read GreenBiz and I listen to NPR. Am I an exception to the majority of Millenials? Perhaps. But of those who I observe on a daily basis and of those whom with I interact online, via social media sites, I can generally agree with Barnes in saying that the green outlook for my generation is fairly positive. Of course, there’s always the stubborn and the naysayers, but to them I say the grass is greener on my side.