Some Examples of our interviews with older people about environment
We have prepared some questions in order to find out, how the attitude towards environmental pollution and protection has changed during the last decades.
Sarah Meiller:
| Questions: | Answers: |
| 1. How old are you? | I'm 61 years old. |
| 2. What information did you get about environmental pollution when you were young? | When I was young - let's say 45 years ago - my family didn't talk about environment, but we absolutely lived it. If only for thrift. We heated with wood and most of the time only the living room. The bathwater heater was only heated on Saturdays and the whole family used the same water for bathing. The youngest was allowed to bath first. We did not either have a car no telephone or refrigerator or similar. My mother took care about our vast garden and the small animals and she was really skilled in preserving food and cooking. We lived very environmentally friendly, were happy children and missed nothing. |
| 3. How did you separate garbage at home? | Nowadays: We have different dust bins and bin liners: paper, plastics, other waste and a composter in the garden. In former days we only had a composter and I cannot remember that we had any other waste. Newspaper, scrap iron and used clothes were collected by travelling people (gipsies). |
| 4. Were there any other steps taken to protect the environment when you were young? | No or only few pesticides were used in agriculture. There were only few cars and electric gadgets in the household. Industry has not already been this developed, but it returned more sewage and exhaust gas into environment without filtering. |
| 5. In your opinion, when did the attitude towards environmental protection start to change? | I think it was at the end of the 70ies or at the beginning of the 80ies, when the "green party" made people attentive for environmental problems. Many spectacular actions of Greenpeace went through the media. And now due to the drama in Fukushima . |
Tobias Braun:
| Questions: | Answers: |
| 1. How old are you? | 69 |
| 2. What information did you get about environmental pollution when you were young? | Environmental pollution wasn't important because nobody knew, that the environment could “die”. Nobody spoke about this topic. |
| 3. How did you separate garbage at home? | It was normal to throw things into the forest or in a sea. Moreover there wasn’t more than one bin to separate rubbish. |
| 4. Were there any other steps taken to protect the environment when you were young? | No, not seriously. |
| 5. In your opinion, when did the attitude towards environmental protection start to change? | Now scientists agree that the plants and trees will die, if people don't stop destroying the environment. So the people see that a life without plants and animals will be very bad. |
Peter Plank:
| Questions: | Answers: |
| 1. How old are you? | 68 |
| 2. What information did you get about environmental pollution when you were young? | It wasn’t an important issue in my youth. |
| 3. How did you separate garbage at home? | All combustible things were burned. |
| 4. Were there any other steps taken to protect the environment when you were young? | In the eighties we had Sundays where you mustn’t drive the car. And e.g. in the butcher’s shop we bought sausages and meat and the shop assistant put it into a “tupperware” . We didn’t need plastic bags. |
| 5. In your opinion, when did the attitude towards environmental protection start to change? | It started about the year 1980. |
Moritz Prüfling:
| Questions: | Answers: |
| 1. How old are you? | 51 |
| 2. What information did you get about environmental pollution when you were young? | There was no information about the environmental pollution, only if there was an environmental disaster. |
| 3. How did you separate garbage at home? | There was no separation of garbage. |
| 4. Were there any other steps taken to protect the environment when you were young? | No, there were no steps, because nobody was interested in protecting the environment. |
| 5. In your opinion, when did the attitude towards environmental protection start to change? | About 1980 to 1985 |
Fabian Fleischmann:
| Questions: | Answers: |
| 1. How old are you? | I am 71 years old. |
| 2. What information did you get about environmental pollution when you were young? | I didn’t get any information about environmental pollution. It was not a topic when I was young. |
| 3. How did you separate garbage at home? | I didn’t have to separate garbage. There was only one bin for all rubbish. |
| 4. Were there any other steps taken to protect the environment when you were young? | Some people protested on the streets against the atomic power plants but nobody recognized them. |
| 5. In your opinion, when did the attitude towards environmental protection start to change? | One of the most important changes towards environment protection was in the year 1986 when the nuclear incident in Tschernobyl happened. |
Max Luber:
| Questions: | Answers: |
| 1. How old are you? | 74 |
| 2. What information did you get about environmental pollution when you were young? | When I was young there wasn`t talked much about the destruction of our nature, because there was no plastic and other stuff like this. |
| 3. How did you separate garbage at home? | The rubbish wasn`t separated. When we had rubbish we burned it. |
| 4. Were there any other steps taken to protect the environment when you were young? | No. Everybody could decide what he did with the rubbish. |
| 5. In your opinion, when did the attitude towards environmental protection start to change? | At the end of the 50ies. |
Anja Gruber:
| Questions: | Answers: |
| 1. How old are you? | I´m 75 years old. |
| 2. What information did you get about environmental pollution when you were young? | We got no information about environmental pollution and everybody said there was no environmental pollution. |
| 3. How did you separate garbage at home? | At first we didn’t separate garbage. But about 20 to 30 years ago, we began to separate the garbage. First we only separated the paper and later the other things, too. |
| 4. Were there any other steps taken to protect the environment when you were young? | We didn’t know anything about protecting the environment. |
| 5. In your opinion, when did the attitude towards environmental protection start to change? | 20 years ago, at the moment when the separating of the garbage began. |
Armin Zitzler:
| Questions: | Answers: |
| 1. How old are you? | 61 |
| 2. What information did you get about environmental pollution when you were young? | I hadn´t got any information about it. I come from a little village and nobody threw his trash into the nature. |
| 3. How did you separate garbage at home? | We had a farm at home, so we had nothing to throw away. |
| 4. Were there any other steps taken to protect the environment when you were young? | No, there was nothing to be done, because there was no environmental pollution. |
| 5. In your opinion, when did the attitude towards environmental protection start to change? | It changed when the people wanted everything new. I think it was a false solution to sell everything in plastic. |
