What does GREEN mean to Me? -Part 1
With a Bachelor in Biological Sciences, it should be a piece of cake to write about something green: I read and talk about that every single day! Does green mean sustainability?
The concept of green
A minute ago I was registering myself to a lecture on Green Infrastructure. You know, green infrastructure, that innovative way to tackle environmental challenges; drought or floods, in urban or rural areas, building with nature, strengthening the capacity of natural elements and the landscape to solve problems. Green and nature are very interchangeable and well accepted. But has it always been this way?
There were a time and a place that defined the concept of green to be a fight for nature. Vancouver, 1971, a green ship sailed towards the Amchitka Island, Alaska, to bear witness to a US plan to carry out a nuclear bomb test. The ship was named Greenpeace. Since then the word green has been forever accompanied by actions toward “Peace for the Earth to Nurture Life in All its Diversity” (Greenpeace slogan). To me, this is more meaningful today than ever!
I’m about to figure it out what Green means to me
So, what could be so challenging about a “write about green” task to me? Green to me, not the meaning of Green to the world, to my generation, to my peers. Green to me. What it is, I am about to figure it out.
When I ask myself what green reminds me of, I see a young girl in the middle of a street market in my hometown walking through the tents and looking for mints and veggies; avoiding green guavas, green bananas, the unsweet and rough unripe taste you get when bitten. I smell the freshness of what is about to be ripe.
Where I come from, Brazil, any unripe fruit is called “Fruta Verde” (Fruta = Fruit and Verde = Green). We tend to say that fruit is green when unripe, no matter its color. However, fruits are not the only things that can be “Verde”. Think about it, everything or everyone that is about to “become ready” or mature are also young, fresh, and green!
Green to me came neither as a color nor as a flagship, but as a sensation of life, full of possibilities.
To be continued . . .