A new survey reveals that the people of US become obsessed with their carbon footprints. Their extreme environmental awareness may create a generation of “carborexics”, warns Psychiatrists in US.

According to a new survey 7% of Americans qualify as ‘dark green’ and become hard core recyclers. The New York Times report describe their lifestyles that might considered as ‘carborexic’.

In US, the dark green activists are using waste vegetable oil for running their cars, using their lawns as a bathroom to save water. An activist Sharon Astyk, is using a special calculator to reduce energy consumption. She and her husband grow most of the vegetable and spend less on consumer goods. Their children sleep in a huddled on the same bed to reduce the electricity bill. Anita Lavine washed and reused the same plastic bag every day for a year. David Chameides, a cameraman, collect all the waste he accumulates in a year in his basement and writing about it regularly on an internet blog.

For some mental health experts, it is a kind of disorder to have compulsion to live green in the extreme. Elizabeth Carl, a psychologist and specialist in obsessive-compulsive disorders, said: “If you can’t have something in your house that isn’t green or organic... if you’re criticizing friends because they’re not living up to your standards of green, that’s a problem.”

David Zucker, a sustainability specialist at a PR company Porter Novelli, which has studied America’s “dark greens”, said they were inordinately influential over other people’s behavior. “They’re pushing towards a lifestyle of zero consumption,” he added.