The first steps in teaching kids about green living and an eco-friendly lifestyle begins by getting them involved in household recycling. Telling children about recycling and actually letting them be active and see the benefits are two completely different things! You can talk till your blue about how vegetable peels and eggshells turn into black gold in the compost pile but when you take the time to walk them through the process from start to finish, chances are that you've just created a recycler for life!
Even a toddler can do a little recycling. It makes them feel like such a big, smart kid to know which bin to put the plastic, glass and/or paper items
Why should we start teaching them these practices early? Because if you raise them to automatically do these few small things, then they never have change they way they live and go through a transitional period. In other words, raise them in the way they should go.
Another important part of teaching kids about green living that can start very early in life is the introduction to proper eating. They may not understand exactly what it means when mommy and daddy say "We only eat organic" but learning not to eat sugary junk until we can teach them to identify the signature organic labels on food we buy from the grocery story is a great start.
There will be plenty of time later to fill them in on the facts of how organic foods are free of hormones, antibiotics and pesticides. It's my belief that our children deserve to be fed organics and to have a chemical free, green baby nursery and that this will most likely prevent issues down the road such as cancers and immediate problems like rashes and breathing problems.
After you have recycling and diet under control, it's time to talk about pollutants and harmful chemicals and how they much harm they can cause especially to small children and babies. Kids need to know that pesticides are poisons and they don't just harm bugs!
They should also know why we buy and use non-toxic cleaning products, cosmetics and personal care products like shampoos and soaps. It's up to us to be ever mindful of the ingredients that manufacturers sneak into the items that we bring into our homes. Why would these companies want to do this? Well, often it's about money and being more effective than Brand B. Often products that are the most natural, organic and animal cruelty-free cost a penny or two more to manufacture and caustic chemicals take less time to clean the oven. OK? The good news is that you can make many of the most effective natural cleaning products yourself from common baking soda, salt, lemon juice and vinegar!
Those are just a few steps to take in teaching kids about green living, the importance of maintaining a green home and and living an eco-friendly lifestyle. If we start them out early, we will have done our part to launch a new generation with respect for the environment.
Saturday
Teaching Kids About Green Living
Monday
IS HAVING KIDS SELFISH?
I'll be the first one to say that it's hard to be selfish with a houseful of kids. But..is having kids selfish when considering the "human impact" of climate change? There are those who think that each family should have no more than one child because having children is an environmental problem.
John Guillebaud of the Optimum Population Trust based in London has indicated that he believes that parents that are having lots of kids are guilty of committing "eco-crimes" and is quoted as saying something to the effect that having one less child far exceeds any benefits gained from repeatedly turning off electric lights and other such energy saving efforts. Apparently each baby that is born is the equivalent of one airline flight after the other criss-crossing the planet. This made me wonder who did this reseach and came up with this rather vague comparison but I got the point.
Even Planned Parenthood appears to be on board and is plastering signs all over the place with the message, "The fewer the merrier."
As for me, I'm in the boat with Al Gore who also has three kids over the recommended number. He's taking a little bit of heat from the press who is accusing him of not practicing what he preaches and sending the message: Do as I say, not as I breed.
In his and Tipper's defense, they had their family long before global warming became an issue. But now that whopping, huge house they had....well, if I ever see him in person I will be asking him about that before I ask him whether or not it is selfish to have children. So, what do you think? Is having kids selfish? Does having more than one child make those of us who talk about living green hypocrites?
Wednesday
ECO FRIENDLY CLOTHES DRYING
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When the weather is just right, laundry day is really not about saving the planet by practicing eco friendly clothes drying. Drying clothes in the sun is about a more easy, relaxed way of taking care of my family’s needs. You just can’t put an Energy Star rating on the anti-depressant benefits of stepping out the back door early in the morning knowing that later in the day you will fill your basket with fresh, sweet smelling clothes. On the rare day when the humidity is low, I can usually gather all three lines and have them folded and hung in the closets by lunch.
The only articles of clothing that I don’t like to line dry are our jeans. When hung on the clothesline to dry they feel too papery and rough and the worst case scenario is that I will have to iron them to remove wrinkles. Not having to heat up and use a steam iron makes the best case imaginable for shopping for the most energy efficient clothes dryer that is manmade!
IS ECO FRIENDLY CLOTHES DRYING FOR EVERYBODY?
Regardless of where you live, you can dry at least part of your laundry in an environmentally friendly fashion. It's true that you have to have a back yard of some size to handle a clothesline. But if you have a postage stamp sized yard, you can get a retractable or an umbrella clothesline. These compact clothes dryers are cheap as can be and may be the best choice for city dwellers. We live in the country and have a big yard so I have the old fashioned kind of clothesline like my grandmother had which was a monster sized eco friendly clothes dryer if one ever existed!
Speaking of my grandmother's clothesline, she had special boards to put under the lines at the halfway mark so that heavy items wouldn’t make the whole load sag to the ground. The vision in my mind of her sheets, towels and granddaddy’s work clothes blowing in the breeze are one of my favorite childhood memories long before the phrase, eco friendly, had ever been coined.
