Green Homes: Turning Your Kids Green on a Dime

by Alaina Hickman

As I walk through the aisles of the local shopping center and see all the fancy toys made of newly manufactured plastic, I can’t but help hear her words ringing in my head.

The way we use our environment 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 didn't expect was that in so doing, it actually made our lives easier and less expensive. Here are some ways for you to green your lives and 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 toy clutter in your house.
• The parents of other children will really appreciate not having to spend money on a toy (trust me, they will).
• 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, but instead to donate it. Great Web sites for secondhand clothes and other children’s items are freecycle.org and rerunsrfun.net.

3. A great Web site dedicated exclusively to handmade items, etsy.com, supports craftspeople 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 waste. Items 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. Buying second-hand and handmade 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. Organic foods are prepared with much fewer chemicals. The chemicals used in regular food accumulate in ground soil and eventually diminish the amount of usable land for foods. Foods that have traveled a long way to the store did so by burning fossil fuels and foods from factory farms are the leading producers of methane gas in this country. Shop for local, organic and plant-based foods 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. 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 ourselves, our families, our communities and our earth.

Join the Green Neighborhood Council for our monthly Green Living Workshop: Growing Up Green. The workshop will be held from 10 am to noon Saturday, June 28 at the Omaha Children’s Museum, 500 S. 20th 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.

GNC Report

The Green Neighborhood Council (GNC) is eight months into its first year and the momentum continues. Currently, six Work Committees consolidate the efforts of the GNC. The committees include:· The Waste Reduction and Recycling Committee is chaired by Steve Andrews of Nebraska State Recycling Association and Dale Gubbels of Firstar Fiber. Volunteers are currently working on two projects.

• The first project is a capture and participation project, funded by Firstar Fiber and the City of Omaha. Phase I is complete and the results are in —unfortunately, fewer residents recycle than expected and fewer materials are being captured than expected. Phase II, which will focus on outreach, will involve surveying the public in established locations in local grocery stores. The goal of Phase II is to develop instructive, image-oriented marketing and to bust recycling myths. Volunteer needs for the project include outreach and surveying. Contact Steve Andrews to volunteer at sandrews@nsra.omhcoxmail.com.
• The second project is a mini recycling center project, funded by Nebraska State Recycling Association. Mini recycling centers will be set up in the Midtown area and along the West Maple corridor. Target groups for the mini recycling centers are apartments, small businesses and neighborhood and church groups. The goal of the project is to capture recyclable material, otherwise not being captured, and generate revenue for participating groups. If you represent, or know of, an organization willing to sponsor a Mini Recycling center, contact Steve Andrews at sandrews@nsra.omhcoxmail.com.

The Green Neighborhood Scorecard Committee developed a neighborhood-level survey with the objectives of:o Discovering current “green” scores for neighborhoodso Assessing what environmental information/resources are needed by neighborhoods in Douglas Countyo Developing practical projects to create “green” neighborhoods

Establishing a baseline to help measure a neighborhood’s environmental progress. The survey, launched April 15, 2008, was distributed via e-mail and was posted to all neighborhood associations and sanitary improvement districts in Douglas County. The survey is also available at http://www.greenomahacoalition.org/. Volunteers will be needed this summer for survey scoring and award development. If you are interested in volunteering with the scorecard committee, either this year or for development and distribution of next year’s scorecard, please contact Trilety Wade at trilety@hotmail.com.

The Food Choices Committee recently voted unanimously on a mission statement for the group: Encourage the production, preparation and purchase of local food through hands-on workshops, education and networking events. This mission will be implemented through partnering with other organizations and effective facilitation.

A short-term project of the committee, in collaboration with the Green Living Workshop committee, is organization/hosting of the July Green Living Workshop – “Green Your Eating.” The workshop, which will focus on how to buy, prepare and store local food, will be held Saturday, July 26 from 10 am to noon at the Village Pointe Farmers’ Market. If you would like to volunteer for this workshop, please contact Kathy Townsend at kathtowns@msn.com. · The Green Living Monthly Workshop Committee has organized and hosted five workshops since January. Workshops are held the fourth Saturday of the month and are scheduled through February 2009. Following is a general schedule of workshops through the rest of the year:

June 28 – “Growing Up Green” at the Children’s Museum
July 26 – “Greening Your Eating” at the Village Pointe Farmers’ Market
August 23 – “Green Your Recycling” at Firstar Fiber
September 6 – “Green Homes Tour," location TBD
October 25 – “Learning How-to Compost” at Fontenelle Forest Nature Center
November 22 – Permaculture workshop – tentative – location TBD

The next workshop committee meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, July 8 from 3:30 to 4:30 pm at the Sierra Club office, 5170 Leavenworth. Contact committee chair Cammy Watkins, cammelia.watkins@sierraclub.org, if you would like to volunteer with this committee, if you know of local composting or solar energy experts or would like to participate in program planning for the 2009 season.

The Green Homes Tour Committee is planning a tour of local green homes – with a focus on affordability – and a tour of the Gifford Park neighborhood, including the Gifford Park community garden, neighborhood urban trees and the Omaha Bicycle Community Shop. The Green Neighborhood Council is partnering with the Flatwater Chapter of the US Green Building Council, Omaha By Design and Sierra Club in this effort. The Green Homes Tour is scheduled for Saturday, September 6 from 1 pm to 5 pm and will highlight four homes, the energy house, water house, food house and materials house.Volunteer opportunities abound for this event. To volunteer, contact committee chair Tim Hemsath (themsath@gmail.com).

The Energy Group is transforming into the Energy and Transportation Group. Do you know of energy/transportation needs or do you have ideas for energy/transportation projects? If so, contact committee chair Pat Jesse at pjesse@MAPAcog.org. The next general meeting of the Green Neighborhood Council is scheduled for Tuesday, July 15 at 6pm at the Neighborhood Center for Greater Omaha, 115 S. 49th Ave, University of Nebraska at Omaha Annex 11.

Recycling Survey: Take Action

The Nebraska State Recycling Association is working with the city of Omaha, Firstar Fiber and the Green Omaha Coalition on a recycling awareness campaign. We need your help. We have developed a survey to help us determine who is recycling, who is not and why. Our goal is to raise awareness of recycling and determine what you want from your recycling program. The survey is available online at http://www.recyclenebraska.org/ or by phone, through the end of September.

We are asking anyone in Omaha who is eligible for the curbside recycling program and is over the age of 18 to take the survey, whether you recycle or not. After all, we can't improve the program unless we know what's wrong with it. Please help us spread the word. If you know someone who does not have computer access, we can conduct the survey by phone as well. When you complete the survey, you will be entered to win a $25 Hy-Vee gift card!
Thank you for your participation.