Imagine a lady stepping out of her large SUV. She walks up to the machinery behind the Lucky store in Hercules with two large trash bags filled with recyclable bottles. While the worker at the recycling center removes each bottle and feeds it to the recycling machinery, she walks back for a few more bags. "Was it the 100th bottle or the 200th?" the lady asks. They have both lost count, but she eventually walks back to her SUV with a couple of dollars in hand.

As her gas guzzler rumbles back to life, dark gray clouds of smoke shoot out of the exhaust pipe. Nonetheless, other grocery shoppers applaud her for taking part in the "going green" act.

What does the term "eco-friendly" truly mean?

Perhaps it means recycling paper, which saves trees from deforestation. Perhaps it means walking a mile rather than driving, which prevents 19 pounds of CO2 emissions. Or, perhaps it means collecting plastic, which could save more than 1 million marine animals from death.

These are a few practical acts that every individual can take to contribute to a better, cleaner, greener environment. But is this what "going green" is all about?

No. There is a lot more to the "going green" movement than what its literal denotations suggest. Although it is the actual act of preserving limited resources and recycling used materials that ultimately change the environment, it is more important for the human race to understand the need for conservation. We reduce, reuse and recycle not to reap personal rewards, but because we care about the earth, because we care about each other.

We need to wake up to reality, or at least accept our history. Was it morally wrong for European settlers to boot the Native Americans off the land they lived on? Should Americans whip out sticks to outline their territory in the dirt? And now, can the people finally call the land theirs and do as they wish with it?

The Indian Removal Acts from hundreds of years ago are still an ugly side of American history. Nonetheless, we did not learn our lesson. We still cannot share our lands and respect nature. We are still the same selfish creatures who are obsessed with the idea of possession. We only care about what we can own, thereby having no consideration about how our carbon footprints impact future generations.

Let's face it, there is no point in saving finite resources since they will not run out during our lifetime. Or that’s what we say to justify our acts.

If we do not change our mentality, Earth will bear brutal, irreversible consequences that future generations will be forced to live through. But it is not too late to start adjusting the course of our environment; it is not too late to start caring.