Green Homes: Growing Up Green - Tips & Workshop

Turning Your Kids Green on a Dime
Easy and Inexpensive tips for Raising Green Children

by: Alaina Hickman

When I became pregnant with my first child I recall fretting to my grandmother over how expensive having a baby would be. In her aged wisdom she replied with a smile, “Dear, the only thing you really need is a dresser drawer and some cloth diapers … and if you don’t have any cloth diapers, then you can use dishrags.” Looking back on this pearl of wisdom it has occurred to me that my grandmother captured the essence of raising green children: simplicity. As I walk through the aisles of the local shopping center and see all the fancy toys made out of newly manufactured plastic I can’t but help hear her words ringing in my head.

Our environment and the way we use it is growing more and more important. With food shortages, landfills of massive proportion, decreasing amounts of fossil fuels, and impending global warming, it is our responsibility as parents to raise our children to be very conscious of how they consume. My husband and I have always felt it important to raise our children with an awareness of the environment, but what we weren’t expecting was that in so doing, it actually made our lives easier and less expensive. Here are some ways for you to green up your lives and, at the same time, teach your children valuable environmental lessons.

1. "Your presence is our present, no gifts please." -- No-Birthday-Present Parties for Kids

• Reduces the amount of plastic toy clutter in your house.
• The parents of other children will really appreciate not having to spend $5-$10 on a toy (trust me, they will).
• Children will have nearly 500 toys in their lifetime, but only remember a few.
• Handmade birthday cards are more memorable and easier to scrapbook than molded hunks of plastic.

When you do purchase gifts, buy green. Some easy green gifts are: books, toys made from wood or bamboo (Target has a line of these), or craft kits like paper airplanes or origami.

2. “Wait… so, mom, giving stuff away to thrift stores and buying from thrift stores is recycling?”

For every new piece of clothing or household item that is produced there is also some waste produced. That is why it’s important to teach kids not to just throw away what they don’t want anymore but instead to donate it. Great websites for second hand clothes and other children’s items

• Freecycle.org
• rerunsrfun.net

3. There is a great website dedicated exclusively to hand made items called Etsy.com which supports craftsmen and artists and can direct you to local sellers. Don't forget about your local thrift store! Buying second hand saves you money and cuts down on the amount of new products produced, which also cuts down on the waste produced. Things bought second hand or handmade are just as good as things bought new.

4. Find durable and sensible lunch boxes that are made to last for years, at laptoplunches.com. Using these has drastically cut down on the brown bags and plastic bags that inevitably end up in the trash.

5. Raising green children also means teaching them how to be green consumers. Buying second-hand and hand-made is a great start, but that doesn’t cover the weekly grocery trip. Buying in bulk greatly reduces the amount of packaging and saves you money. Certified Organic foods are grown without the use of synthetic chemicals. When poorly managed, synthetic chemicals used in conventional farming can build up in the soil, diminishing the productivity of farmland. Foods that have traveled a long way to the store did so by burning fossil fuels, increasing the carbon footprint of these items. So when you can try to shop local, organic, and plant based for the health of the earth and your family.

6. “Mommy, can the worms eat this?”

Educating children on green living can be a family experience that gives life long lessons on living independently. Beneath our kitchen table is a worm bin that we put our dinner leftovers and other foods that have sat in the fridge too long. My youngest daughter is absolutely fascinated by the worms and we often work on them together. My children are able to see how nature really works when they put their food scraps in the worm bin and watch the worms make healthy fertilized soil. Then we use the soil in our garden. My kids actually get to see and experience the full circle of nature and, in the end, get to reap the “fruits” of it. Part of being green is being self-sustainable, which is not often taught in schools today. So even if having a box of worms in your kitchen is just not your thing, gardening with your children in the back yard or even a pot on the table can be fun and give them a sense of pride for having grown their own food.

There isn’t a trick to raising kids green. All you have to do is become mindful of what you consume and throw away. Being green is just living more simply, not spending as much money, and being more self-sustaining, all of which would benefit us, our families, our communities, and our earth.

Join us four our Monthly Green Living Workshop: Growing Up Green. The Workshop will be held from 10:00 am to 12 noon on Saturday, June 28, 2008, at the Omaha Children’s Museum, 500 S. 20^th St. (the workshop is free, but if you wish to visit the museum afterward you’ll need to pay admission). Learn more tips and tricks for raising green kids and sign up for a chance to win FREE green parenting and kids’ items. For information and RSVP (space is limited), contact Julie at wasserfarms@gmail.com

The event is free and open to the public. Feel free to forward to anyone who may be interested.

Sponsored by the Green Neighborhood Council of the Green Omaha Coalition (www.greenomahacoalition.org)