Having been in Europe (Dresden and Brighton) for the last two weeks, I notice everyone here is a lot more resource-conscious than we generally are in America. Every home I’ve visited has a half-flush toilet, and in both downtown Dresden and Heathrow airport they’ve installed absolutely beautiful (and energy-saving) fountains – public art that uses mere spurts of water shot up at different heights at regular intervals; all of the drama and beauty of a public fountain at only a fraction the cost in water.
It’s not that we don’t have resource-saving programs in America, but in Europe they seem to be so much more widely accessible and adopted by the average person, something we really need to see happen here too. For example, while it's becoming a popular practice in America too, almost everyone in Europe brings their own shopping basket to the market and in England you even have to pay for bags as an incentive not to forget. You also bag your own groceries, which saves the cost of a bagger.
It's not about deprivation, either. As a Northern California “Foodie”, I always assume we have some of the best food in the world but Waitrose, one of the regular high street stores in England - a country that has in the past been thought a bit of a slouch in things culinary - is as good as most anything we have. I couldn’t help popping in to pick up some of my favorite foods that are hard to find at home – individual portions of gooseberry fool, strawberry trifle and tarte tatin, shrimp in marie rose sauce, taramasalata, Prince Charles’ stem ginger cookies and clotted cream. Oh yes.
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