Green Kids – Responsible Adults!

Live Green? Green Kids Love It!

 

green kids play in natureIf you live a green lifestyle, are your kids green too?

Teaching children about responsible green lifestyles is important.  Being eco-conscious helps them to develop an appreciation for their planet.  Green kids grow up to become responsible adults.

The great news is that teaching your kids to be eco-conscious is fun!

Here are 7 tun tips for green kids

Green Kids Tip #1: Discuss

Look for learning moments to discuss why you live a green lifestyle. For example, when you’re shopping you might choose to purchase an item at a flea market. Explain to your child why you’re buying used instead of new.

Green Kids Tip #2: Be a good role model

This is perhaps the easiest way to teach your children to be green and eco-conscious. Children pay attention to what you do. If you pay attention to how you consume, reuse items and recycle what you can’t reuse, your kids will grow up with that example.

Green Kids Tip #3: Explore nature

green kids enjoy the outdoorsNature is what you’re trying to preserve and protect. If children don’t get out and enjoy nature, they won’t have an appreciation for the earth. Get some fresh air (and hopefully some sunshine too!). Take nature hikes. Enjoy the beach. Head to the mountains or take bike rides. Or just walk round the block and see what you can find!

Green Kids Tip #4: Field trips

Some recycling centres, landfills and water treatment plants offer tours. Check your local facilities – what educational experiences are available? If they don’t commonly offer tours, consider visiting them on Earth Day. Show your green kids what happens to our trash and waste water. Help them learn the cycle of consumption. It’ll help them appreciate what they use.

Green Kids Tip #5: Garden

Gardening is a wonderful way to appreciate and experience the earth. If you don’t have space outside you can create a windowsill herb garden. Use recycled, reused and organic material to create your garden. For example, plant your herb seeds in tin cans. Compost to fertilize the soil. Use rainwater to water the plants.

Green Kids Tip #6: Make it a game

Show your kids how much water or electricity you use each month. Make it a game to lower your consumption. Turn off the lights when they’re not in use. Use water sparingly. Turn off all appliances. See how much you can reduce your electric, gas or water bill during the month. Then reward children for their efforts.

Green Kids Tip #7: Volunteer.

green kids VolunteerBecome active in outdoor clean ups. If your community has a “clean up the park” day, sign the family up. Volunteer at your recycling center. Or assist the recycling program at community events.

For example, many running events have recycling volunteers to make sure all those paper cups from the aid stations end up in the recycling bin rather than the street or the garbage. Show your children that the Earth is important and enlist their help in keeping it clean.

A Final Word

Most importantly, follow through on your words. If you tell your children that being environmentally conscious and living green is important to you, then follow it up with rules. Limit television viewing time. Ask them to turn off the lights. Make sure they don’t take 20-minute showers. Create a recycling centre in your home.

When it comes to teaching children, follow through is important.

Your kids will inherit the earth that we leave behind. Make sure they look after it well!

Spread the green word – share buttons below – thank you!


Tags

eco-conscious, green kids, green lifestyle, living green


  • Since this post was removed on reddit (for reasons I don’t really agree with but am not a moderator on the board), I will post my reply here and see what you think.

    Of course, the second greenest course of action is not to breed. The first would be to commit suicide. I’m not green enough for the latter but have chosen the former.

    Environmental tests have told me that if everyone lived as I do, we’d need 3.3 earths. But, if everyone lived as I do, we would only need them for a single generation.

    I firmly believe that this planet cannot sustain our current human population, or even anything close to our current population, in perpetuity. We are depleting renewable resources at a far faster rate than they can renew themselves.

    Environmentally conscious individuals need to once again begin a dialog that includes human overpopulation. I’m not sure how this topic became taboo. It is the cause of all environmental degradation, including our most immediate crisis, climate change.

    So, I try to be as green as I can reasonably be in the life I have. I strongly believe in Reduce, Reuse, Repair, and Respect with recycling only as a last resort. I walk or use public transportation. I don’t drive often and drive the most fuel efficient vehicle that meets my needs (Prius, in my case). I conserve water at every opportunity. I avoid buying anything wrapped in plastic as much as possible, especially bottled water.

    And still, my greenest action of all is a vasectomy.

    So, are my kids green? Yes. Their environmental impact on the planet will be exactly zero. Ditto for their kids.

    • Firstly, I appreciate your persistence – not only finding this article on reddit before it was removed, but also repeating your well-thought-out comment here – thank you!
      I fully agree that we simply cannot continue as we are, it is unsustainable in so many ways.
      I’m delighted to read of your green living – and I’m interested in your thoughts. Why do you think the population topic has become taboo, and is this a global phenomenon or localised? Do you think over-population is a problem everywhere? Could solutions be different between “developed” and “developing” countries (it’s not a great way of dividing the world but let’s use it for the moment). In developing countries, education can be key – educated women with a modicum of choice in their lives have fewer children. Children in developed countries tend to have a much higher carbon footprint than kids in developing countries. If we did reduce over-population (utopian dream?), would we still have people wanting to extract resources for optimum short-term gain?
      Again, thanks for taking the time and trouble to contact me!

      • Wow you’ve managed to bring up a lot of lengthy topics in a compact little paragraph.

        My wife heard that overpopulation became taboo because some suggested that it was racist to talk about population due to the ethnicities involved where people are having the most children. I have not looked into this in detail. But, most environmental organizations in the U.S. do not discuss population. I also don’t know if that is true globally.

        I do personally believe that overpopulation is a global problem. While it is true that people in developing and even more so in failed nations use far less resources than in wealthier countries, I strongly believe that the world just cannot support anywhere near the current human population. I think we are literally stealing from our children to feed ourselves. Earth overshoot day (a.k.a. ecological debt day) was August 19th this year. I personally think the calculations probably ignore many factors. I think we probably hit it a lot sooner than the standard calculation would state. But, that’s just a gut feel from my own pessimism as well as my detest for our species. I wrote a rather lengthy blog post years ago (6 years in fact, hadn’t realized I’ve been blogging that long) about how many people I think that the world can sustain. My own opinion is probably not a popular one. But, I put the number at less than 300 million.

        http://misanthropicscott.wordpress.com/2007/09/13/what-is-the-sustainable-human-population-for-this-planet/

        I think that the answer globally for solving overpopulation is exactly as you state. It takes three major efforts, education (especially of women), food and medicine (when people expect all of their kids to survive, the difference is huge), and of course availability of contraception. If any of these are missing, the effort will fail. One of the problems I have with organizations that try to feed the starving masses is that they sometimes fail at this trifecta resulting in feeding more hungry people instead of feeding hungry people more.

        As for greed, it is part of human nature. There will always be greedy induhviduals (not a typo). But, if we also address the most immediate environmental concern, climate change (IMHO, a threat to the survival of our species and many others and also a result of overpopulation), then extracting certain particularly awful resources such as coal, oil, and gas will no longer be profitable. So, what will the greedy do? Will they start to put up horrific amounts of solar panels? Dig deep for geothermal energy? I don’t know. But, I think the result will be less bad than where we are today.

        Remember though, with my target number for our species being the fantasy land number of less than 300 million, consider what problems today would even exist with that much lower population.

        Of course, if I’m right that the number really is that low, we’re in for some very bad times ahead. Getting to that number certainly does not seem to be happening voluntarily. So, if I’m right, the population will not be reduced gently by attrition, but rather by the cold hard limits of the finite planet on which we live.

        Already, global food production is down at least 5% from climate change. Overfishing of the oceans has caused the global catch to be in decline since the mid 1980s (realized only once China stopped lying about their numbers). And, that decline has happened during a period of increasing technology for pulling fish out of the ocean. We’ve also started to fish deeper and deeper to the point where we are now eating things like orange roughy which first breeds at at 60 years old or so and Antarctic toothfish (that sounds so bad we’d better call it something else; how about Chilean sea bass?). All of the overfishing won’t even matter much if ocean acidification continues on its merry way and kills off the pteropods that are the basis of much of the ocean food chain.

        Gee, I guess I’m really not very optimistic about the mid-term future of our species and a whole lot of others I find more beautiful than our own. (Note: I actually don’t hate most individuals; I just hate our species as a whole for the destruction we cause.)

        • Thank you so much for your detailed answer! That’s really interesting re the taboo, I can see why it might happen. I particularly like your comment that we are “stealing from our children to feed ourselves”, I think it’s very accurate. Yes, the concept of child mortality expectation was such a shock to me when I moved to Africa – but I could see the logic, and you’re right, it makes a huge difference. All 3 elements need to be in place for successful population control, and all too often, they’re not. “induhviduals” – lovely!
          300 million does sound difficult to achieve – but without a doubt climate change will affect population in ways we’re only just beginning to realize.
          And it’s difficult to be optimistic when we look at the challenges we’re facing – and the widespread lack of action.
          Without a doubt, we are massively destructive species.
          (And yet we have such power for good too!)
          But we’ll continue to do what we can, with what we’ve got, and try to make a difference.
          Thanks again for this – and I enjoy your blog (and it’s comments) very much, I’m really glad you stopped by!

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