Green Parenting: what steps have you taken?
These are useful and collceted by Anne!
Question: Green Parenting: what steps have you taken?
My husband and I are very pro Earth and try to be as environmentally friendly as it is possible to be with 4 children (6 month old triplets & 22 month old daughter). We are just looking for more advice/ideas or really to see what other people are doing to be more Earth conscientious.
Thus far we:
♥ Own all energy star appliances
♥ Breastfeed all our children
♥ Purchase organic foods when possible
♥ Use cloth diapers in combination with elimination communication (used to have a diaper service because it was hard to keep up when the triplets were little, but started washing our own this month)
♥ Have purchased shoes from ecoSNEAKS
♥ Use clothesline instead of dryer as much as possible
♥ Recycle as much as we possibly can
♥ Reuse everyday items (bags & such) as much as possible
♥ Most importantly, strive to teach our children the values of being environmentally friendly
What are other Green Parents out there doing?
The following is the answer:
Answer by ~Texas Belle~
I would love to own all energy star appliances, but the prices are outrageous. But we do like you do and we hand wash dishes a lot, hang our clothes on the clothes line when we can, I plan to breast feed my daughter when she’s born, and we teach our oldest to respect the earth and it’s resources and to recycle. We aren’t overly “green” though because sometimes we do use paper plates and we don’t have a recycling service close by so we have to drive about an hour to the closest recycling center. And as far as cloth diapers and organic food, we’d love to but organic buying is just not within our budget and cloth diapers require using the washer even more than usual so we do stick to disposable diapers. We do have a compost in our backyard in a barrel though that we use and we grow some of our own vegetables. We’re doing what we can and I also drive a fuel efficient vehicle.
Kudos to you and yours though! Keep on!
Answer by Verity Watson
The biggest thing we’ve done is move to a location where we don’t rely on a car. I walk my 3 y.o. to school, and my husband takes the bus or train downtown. In the average week, we drive less than 20 miles.
We also use green cleaning products, though I’m also looking at using fewer products in general. We rely on microfiber cleaning and dusting cloths for most of our needs. (Though with a 3 y.o., I’m not ready to get rid of paper towels just yet.)
We also try to buy products from eco-friendly and socially responsible companies. So our son has lots of Plan Toys instead of Fisher-Price. We’re looking at buying new outdoor furniture, and we’re leaning towards Polywood, a building material made from recycled plastic bottles.
We’re in the process of switching to recycled paper products, and we’ll also start using Preserve toothbrushes (made from old yogurt containers, and can be recycled into a wood substitute.)
My husband volunteers for river clean-ups locally. He takes a canoe out and collects debris from the local rivers and waterways. As soon as the kids are old enough, it will be a family affair. In the meantime, we kayak for fun, teaching them to respect and love our natural world – even though we live in a big metropolis.
And while we do eat out once every week at a local resto, we try to limit how much dining out we do. And we’ve cut way down on the amount of take-out/fast food we rely on. We also eat at the lower end of the food chain – more whole grains and beans, less red meat.
We also do a lot of what you do – though thanks for the tip on ecoSneaks! Right now our son wears a lot of Keen. (Link below.) And I’m 16 weeks with #2 – we’re leaning towards gDiapers, which seem like a good compromise between cloth and disposables.
Over time, perhaps our biggest change is that we simply consume less. For families with our income, it would be normal for us to live in a much bigger house, with much more stuff. We just don’t. And that’s perhaps the most important change everyone can make.
Longer term, we’re evaluating the possibility of solar panels. Because we live in an urban rowhome, it’s not easily done. And we can’t quite afford it yet.
It’s good to hear from others trying to make a difference. Sometimes my husband’s family behaves like we’re practicing child abuse because we don’t want our son to have plastic toys that run on batteries!
Answer by mel
I know this may sound bad but my family doesn’t flush the toilet all the time. we also don’t use lights in the day. we open a window.Instead of driving walk or take the bus. I glad to hear that you are trying to help conserve energy. and THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!
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