As a parent who tries very hard to live simple and green, it important to me that my toddler learns the same. Sustainable living is all about ensuring that we create the least amount of impact on our environment while fulfilling our own needs and requirements. While it may seem tough or challenging to explain all of this to a preschooler or even, an older kid, it really isn’t so. In fact, if you use the right tools and ideas you can make sustainable living fun, interesting and educational for young children.

Here are some easy-to-do and fun ways to teach kids about sustainability and why it is important live in an earth-friendly way.

• Get Down and Dirty. Gardening is a great way for kids to learn about sustainable living. Give them a patch of their own to dig into, feel the earth, weed and plant. This will also teach them about being responsible since they’ll have to feed and water the plant as well. My toddler, like most toddlers, loves to get all messy and what better way to do that than have them dig around and learn how to be responsible for a plant. Even if you live in an apartment, like me, you can buy small flowerpots and grow herbs and flowers. Have your children paint and decorate the pots and take turns in digging and watering them.
• Nature Walks and Talks. Another fun way to learn about sustainability is to spend time with Nature. Walks in the park, day trips to the lake, a camp out in a wooded area are all great ways to learn about the importance of Nature. Depending upon the age of your child, you can talk about how the ecosystem works and point out different species of plants, bugs and animals. A favorite craft activity for us is to pick leaves and flowers, dry them and then, glue them onto cards and sheets of notepaper.
• Have Fun Shopping Green. Older kids will enjoy learning about how their decisions can impact the environment. Back to school shopping can include buying eco-friendly backpacks made of recycled material, organic cotton or hemp, instead of toxic PVC, notebooks made of recycled paper and pencils made of FSC-certified wood or even, recycled newspapers such as the ones made by Tree Smart!
• Visit the Farmer’s Market or a Farm. A fun day trip idea is to visit a farmer’s market and pick up new and interesting fruits and vegetables. This is also a good trick to get picky kids to eat those fruits and veggies. Several families also farm their own produce so if you can visit one of those farms, it will be a great way for kids to see how food is grown.
• Books, Videos and Websites. One of my favorite websites is Ollie’s World. It offers great tips and activities for kids to learn about the earth, an eco-friendly life and living sustainably. Books and videos are another great tool for teaching even toddlers about living green. A few great books that I’ve read and used with my toddler are Easy to be Green by Ellie O’Ryan, The Greenzys by Danielle Mentzer and William is Going Green from the William the Garbage Truck and Crew series.

While these are some great ways to teach kids about sustainable living, they are relatively long-term. However, there are several baby steps that you, as a green parent, can start taking right away.

Baby Steps for Sustainable Living

1. Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.
2. Turn off the lights as soon as you leave the room.
3. Save water by turning it off when brushing teeth.
4. Take a bath with a bucket of water rather than showering. In fact, fill up an inflatable pool and let the kids splash around instead of a regular shower one day a week.
5. Walk for groceries rather than drive.
6. Spend at least 30 minutes outdoors, running, playing and basically, having fun with Nature.

Simple steps such as these are ideal for teaching sustainable living to children of all ages. Just choose the ideas that work best for your family and start small, but do start. Meanwhile, do share your own tips for teaching kids about sustainable living. What works best with you to show kids how to lead a greener and more earth-friendly life?

Here’s an interesting product, FLOAA Dish-sposables.  FLOAA Dish-sposables are biodegradable pet feeding dishes.

At first glance, I thought the idea was very interesting, but then wondered if it was very practical. After all, isn’t washing an existing pet dish more economical and eco-friendly than purchasing disposable dishes?

Then I read a little further and saw the reason for the idea. Apparently the owner is in the habit of rescuing animals, and got tired of using paper plates to feed the various animals. It just didn’t sit right with him using paper plate after paper plate only to toss them in the trash. He found it to be such a waste so he designed these eco-friendly biodegradable food dishes.

Once I gained the proper perspective, I though, “Wow, what a great idea.”

If animals are your business and you tire of having to wash food bowls, or find it impractical to use plastic or metal reusable bowls, FLOAA disposable dishes seem to be a nice alternative. Since the plates are biodegradable, they do just fine in a compost pile (for all of you composters out there).

By the way, if you want to know what FLOAA stands for, it stands for “For the Love of All Animals.” Check ‘em out.

I decided to walk the walk, not just talk the talk.

One of the characteristics of living green is cutting out redundancy, eliminating waste and finding more efficient ways to do things. To that end, I made a few online changes.

After taking stock of my online endeavors, I realized I was adding to Internet waste. I have a few blogs that cover different aspects of the same topic. Rather than clutter cyberspace with two different blogs why not combine them into one.

The Dollar Fights Back

I had a blog called The Dollar Fights Back which talked about ways to save money. In my opinion living green and saving money go hand in hand. So, to cut the waste, I’ve decided to combine the contents of that blog here.

I’m going to sprinkle the Dollar Fights Back posts here on the BLULOW blog. Therefore if you’re a regular reader and find all of a sudden there are posts sprinkled intermittently that you have not read in the past, it’s because I’ve inserted the DFB posts in date appropriate order.

This online pruning should give me a little more time and energy to nurture this blog just a bit (it could really use it).

Earlier on I had a post on how to recycle wine bottles. Well, here’s an article on what to do with the corks.

The author provides 10 solutions on how to recycle wine bottle corks.

The only one she seems to be missing is creating a wine bottle cork board. It’s simple and easy to do.

What You’ll Need

• Scissor

• Wine bottle corks (as many as you can accumulate)

• Glue. Preferably Gem-Tac Permanent Adhesive (hot glue gun works only temporarily. Over time the corks fall off).

• Velcro or hanging ribbon

Here’s what You Do:
Take a piece of cardboard. It could be round, square or rectangle, it doesn’t matter. Cut it into the shape of your choosing (a heart would be nice).

Decide how and where you want to hang the cork board. You could use either Velcro backing or place a string/ribbon through the cardboard and use it to hang the board on a hook. You need to decide this up front. It’s easier to poke a hole in the cardboard before the cork is adhered to it.

After deciding how you want to hang the cork board, pre arrange the cork stoppers on the cardboard so that there’s no space in between each piece of cork. Get creative. Lay some horizontally, some vertically. You can even stand some on the end (just cut the excess cork so that the cork board has an even/level plane.

Now that everything is arranged to your liking, individually glue each cork to the cardboard with the Gem-Tac glue.

Once the glue is dry, hang the cork board and start using it.

Get Creative

If you really want to get creative with wine corks, check out these wine cork flip flops (scroll down to see the flip flops).

I remember when I used to lovingly scold my friends about using so much printer paper. Whether it’s at home or in the office, if you print out one document with an error, it had to be fixed and printed again. The discarded document would end up in the trash.

Commitment to Change

I’m happy to report that many of my friends are now using .pdf software as the final version of their documents and if they, on occasion, print out something with an error, they cut the paper into quarters or thirds or whatever the size of choice and use the back as scrap paper (a small accomplishment, but one small step for the home office, one giant leap for the environment).

To further prevent paper waste, we networked the house to use one printer. The printer is an old printer and is not equipped with the infra red ability to print from a device, but hooking it into a Belkin wireless printer hub (which cost about $75 ), I was able to network all of the household printers and laptop to use the one printer.

Using one central printer helps to reign the kids in from printing 20 copies of the lyrics to their favorite song or 8 full color copies of the cutest puppy in the world. The kids also understand what it means to print on both sides of the page.

The more mature folks in the house understand the need to conserve paper and print on an ‘as needed’ basis. Therefore I installed PDF Create (a software program that makes pdf’s out of just about anything) on each computer. If anyone wants to share documents its pdf’d and sent electronically. After a little training its amazing how infrequently it becomes necessary to print.

Old School

This post may sound very old school and very ‘yesterday,’ but not everyone is equally ecologically evolved. There are still a few folks out there who have several household printers and could stand to help the environment by consolidating and printing less.

I was watching one of the Green TV channels the other day (don’t remember the actual channel name because I so infrequently get to watch), but the host of the show gave me a great idea, recycled bikes.

For the Non Bike Rider

How many times have you gotten a great idea to get in shape, run out purchase a gym membership, order the Total Fitness Gym from TV or the latest get in shape video/DVD only to fizzle out and realize that you spent a ton of money for nothing? C’mon, you know you’ve done it once or twice or more in your life.

Well, the idea of a recycled bike sounded great. Currently I don’t have a bike, and my old ‘spend and waste’ personality would have gone to a bike store and allowed the salesperson to convince me that I needed the latest, best most expensive bike loaded with a ton of useless gadgets. After purchasing such a bike, with all of the intentions of riding it regularly, I would ride the bike once or twice and it would sit in the garage, or my kids would ride and ruin it.

Recycled  Bike

A much more economical approach is to find a second hand bike, and fix it up. Not only is it more cost effective, it’s recycling at its best. You just have to know what to look for in a used bike. After all, brakes can always be repaired, tires replaced and gear chains replaced and oiled. A bent or broken bike frame is another story.

For folks like me looking to get back into the swing of biking, I think a used bike is a great place to begin. However, once I get to Lance Armstrong’s level, then I’ll contemplate getting a new bike.

While searching the internet, I came across these interesting sites involving bike recycling. If any of the recyclers are located near you, it might be worth checking them out:

Local Motion in Vermont
Recycle a Bike in Providence Rhode Island
Recycle a Bicycle in New York City
Recycled Cycles in Colorado

Your carbon footprint is measured by the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) your lifestyle produces. Things like driving a car, heating your home, use of electricity all produce carbon dioxide. The amount of carbon dioxide you produce over a certain amount of time is your carbon footprint.

Keep in mind that your footprint includes your own CO2 production, and a portion of the CO2 emitted in the manufacture of products you use. It’s tough to allocate one person’s individual portion of the emissions created in the production of a disposable bottle of water, but there are websites and CO2 footprint calculators available on the internet to help you figure it out.

Below are a few websites to help you do just that, calculate your carbon footprint:
The Nature Conservancy Carbon Footprint Calculator

Household Emissions Calculator

Terrapass

Visit all three of the sites. Check your carbon footprint thrice. Sometimes it takes multiple times for it to sink in. If you’re anything like me, after seeing your carbon footprint, you’ll be a lot more receptive to the tips for reducing your CO2 emissions.

If you have not done so already, I strongly suggest that you take a look at the Consumer World website.  In addition to looking through the website, you should sign up for their newsletter.

Consumer World has a fountain of information that everyone who buys anything should be aware of.  As a result of a link from their site, I recently read an article on how Purina Dog Food reduced the size of their dog food bag from 20 pounds to 18 pounds.  The price?  Well of course the price remained the same.

The folks at Mouse Print attempted on more than one occasion to get an explanation from Purina as to the reason for the downsized portions.  Rather than re-word their findings, check it out for yourself.

Lots of Info

No need for me to say anymore.  Check them out and check out the sites they link to.  If you’re like me, you’ll bookmark the Consumer World as a valuable resource.

I read an article the other day that people spend more money on cell phones than they do on landlines. That’s not very hard to believe. Think about your own household. How much do you spend on cell phones and how much do you spend on landlines?

More than just the monthly or annual expense for phone service, think back over the past three to five years and ask yourself this question:

• How many home phone systems or telephones have I purchased in the past three to five years?

Then ask yourself this question:

• How many cell phones have I purchased in the past three to five years?

And the Answer Is?

I’d wager to bet that you purchased more cell phones than you did home phones. Heck, you’re probably still using the same old wireless phone system you purchased several years ago. Your cell phone, on the other hand, probably has the latest bells and whistles.

Now, while you’re interviewing yourself, ask yourself this question:

• What did I do with all of my old cell phones?

Hmmmm, anyone who has read more than one post on this blog knows where I’m heading. It’s all about recycling the cell phones.

What to do with Old Cell Phones

I’m going to share with you a few places where you could put your old cell phone to use:

How to Donate Your Old Cell Phone: This quick how to lists three organizations that accepts donated cell phones. It also offers instructions on how to erase the data from your cell phone.

Below are more organizations that accept old cell phones. The cell phones are recycled, refurbished or sold. The proceeds are used for a good cause.

Support Network for Battered Women

Recycling for Charities:

Eco Cell – cell phone recycling

If these organizations don’t tickle your fancy, contact your State’s Department of Environmental Conservation or counterpart thereof.

For example the state of New York offers sites for cell phone recycling or donation:

Chicago has the Chicago Recycling Coalition

QC Canada has Charitable Recycling Program

No matter where you live, you can find a charity that can put your old cell phone to good use.

Marching Orders

I’ve got my marching orders. Now all I have to do is raid my daughter’s toy chest to retrieve all of our old cell phones and start donating them to charities.

I recently moved across the country from Chicago down south to Texas. After living in Chicago for 8 years, I had built myself a nice set of furniture, books, and other “stuff”. Some of it could be cheaply and easily replaced, others were just unfeasible. So I had a dilemma: how do you move an apartment full of stuff, quickly, cheaply, and more importantly, safely for the environment?

Can I PLEASE have your junk mail?

I started by shooting a quick e-mail to my friends and neighbors. I asked them to save newspapers, grocery bags, and any boxes they received from their internet orders. You can shred the junk mail and newspapers, fill up the grocery bags with the paper, and you have a reused alternative to packing peanuts. Just don’t forget to recycle the bags and paper when you’re done unpacking!

Free Cardboard Boxes

Buying a new cardboard box is an unneeded waste of money and natural resources. There many places that you can get boxes from for free after they have already used them. Liquor stores, grocery stores, and retail shops all receive tons of boxes every day, and most are more than willing to give them away. I got mine from the local college fraternities. If the fraternity has a kitchen, they probably get a large shipment of food every week, and all those boxes just end up in the dumpster. Stop by the fraternities and sororities and ask any one of the members, and I’m sure you can get as many boxes as you need.

Brown paper packages tied up with string

An interesting idea for packaging books was suggested by a friend. Rather than fill up boxes and boxes with them, he suggested that I simply tie them with some twine (hemp, of course). While this might not be your preferred method for collector’s items, it is a low-resource way of keeping your books organized and ready for the move. Hemp twine can also be used as an alternative to packing tape for your boxes, and it is much more environmentally friendly than standard packing tape.

Finding the missing green spots

One of the most interesting parts of a move is that it allows you to see a time capsule of your life. You can see the old skins you have shed, and you get a unique opportunity to find new ways to go green. While moving I found two dozen plastic pens, most of which still had ink, none of which worked. For $6 I was able to buy a refillable pen, which I have had for a few months now, with very little waste. I also realized that all of my spices were in plastic containers, and I could replace these with reusable glass jars. Like many people, I grew up storing all the plastic bags that I get from groceries, but I never realized how quickly they add up, until I got ready to throw them in the recycle bin, and I decided to get reusable grocery bags.

These are just simple ways I found of “greenifying” my last big move. I don’t have plans to move again anytime soon, but I welcome any suggestions for other ways to make my next move a bit greener.

Guest Post by Ricardo Gonzalez