Green Living

Teaching Your Teen Green Values

When your child becomes a teenager, he or she begins to develop personal identity and individuality. Teaching your teen about green values is therefore a different thing than teaching a young child. Here are some ideas and resources for guiding your teen as to the importance of a green lifestyle. * Encourage your teen to volunteer with local environmental groups. That way they can get hands-on experience with environmental issues, and they will be making a real difference. Suggest that your teen get involved with local clean-up efforts or a community garden. * Participate with your teen and set a good example. See if you can get the whole family (or at least another family member) to get involved in community volunteer efforts. * Consider some eco-friendly projects, such as getting your teen to sew and decorate his or her own cloth tote. * Help your teen grow some of his or her own food. Set aside a plot of your yard, make a vegetable garden box, or use containers. * Encourage your teen to participate in day-to-day decisions and activities. For example, let your teen plan an eco-friendly meal. He or she can plan the menu and shop for the necessary groceries. This can ...

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Easy Strategies to “Green” a School

The green movement goes beyond our homes. It has entered the realm of education, and administrators and school officials are looking for ways to go green in their schools. Here are some strategies for greening a school. 1. Start a program at your school. This will accomplish the first step, which is raising awareness. Check with the appropriate school officials, and plan meetings on campus after school. Include members of the faculty at these meetings if possible. If it is not possible, then be sure to present your ideas to them periodically. 2. Approach school officials with well-planned ideas. The better organized and specific your ideas are, the more likely they will be well received. Keep things simple at first. 3. Set up recycling bins in the cafeteria. Make sure there is a plan in place to have the bins emptied and kept clean. Have bins for aluminum, plastic, paper, and glass. 4. Food waste can be put to good use in a compost or worm bin. A good worm farm can break down waste quickly, and the school can sell or use the resulting compost. Schools do generate a great deal of food waste. 6. Use all that great compost to plant a school ...

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How to Teach Your Kids to Be Good Winners and Losers

You may have heard and used the phrase "sore loser" before, but did you ever stop to think about what a "sore winner" might look like? It's just as important for kids to learn how to win as to lose graciously. These are key lessons for healthy socialization. Here are some ideas on how to teach these skills to your kids. 1. Play board games at home. This gives you a chance to talk about the intricacies of winning and losing in a family environment without the pressures of a sports game. 2. Winners don't brag or "rub it in." If your child does this, remind him of how he would feel if he was the loser and the winner bragged. 3. Losers don't gripe. Even if the winner is gloating, remind your child that losing gracefully means complimenting the winner and accepting defeat calmly. 4. Know when to stop. Sometimes, if a game is going badly and your child is losing, it's good just to stop and talk a bit about what winning and losing means. Ask her how the game is making her feel, and how she can handle those feelings. 5. Don't just let your child win. It's tempting in a culture ...

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Eco-Friendly Entrepreneurs

Starting up a new business is a difficult task. Among the number of challenges met for the start up entrepreneur; raising financing, building relationships with vendors and suppliers and most importantly, finding and building a customer base.  Where does the environment fit into this? Environmentalism is a major factor in people’s everyday lives. It’s a movement with a huge demographic behind it. As a start up business, making green decisions in the creation of your business and its subsequent products, will yield a reputation for you and your business that will attract this environmentally sound demographic and assist in building a wider customer base.  Not only that, you’ll be making a positive contribution to the environment, making the world a better place. Considering the huge demographic interested in an eco friendly lifestyle, the demand for businesses providing going green services is on the rise. Check out some ideas for Green Businesses: 1. Help consumers slice energy costs in half with solar water heating systems. Consumers are looking for ways to cut back on energy costs. The demand for businesses that provide services to cut back on energy consumption and costs is on the constant rise. A business specializing in solar panel installation or solar ...

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Eco-Friendly Barbequing

It’s a Sunday afternoon. The sky is blue and there isn’t a cloud in sight. The kids are home from school, music is playing, and it’s an all around beautiful day to fire up the grill. With a great BBQ to host the cookout, fresh meats and vegetables, and good company, it promises to be a day of good food and fun by the pool. With all the fun and excitement, don’t forget to think green when you’re about to fire up the grill.  Most people are aware of the negative impact that paper plates and cans have on the environment. However, the ecological impact of a day of barbequing is not as well known. The first question is, which grilling method is the best for the environment; charcoal, electric, or gas? Gas grills are popular for their relative greenhouse gas neutrality. However, when you look at each type of grill over the course of the products manufacturing to its use, more questions arise as to the positive and negative attributes of each option. The Department of Energy’s Natural Laboratory claims that a charcoal grill releases twice as much carbon as a gas grill.  The Environmental Protection Agency claims that charcoal grills ...

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