Green Your Toddlers: Easy ways to teach your child be green

The toddler years seem to be filled with waste.

I’m saddened by the food that we waste in our home daily. Did you know we throw out enough food to feed 49 million people every year? Not to mention water, supplies, diapers, birthdays and so on…

My children are toddlers, but we have started to teach them, begun to plant seeds of awareness.

Awareness that they shouldn’t be wasteful, awareness that what they do in their home impacts beyond them.

Opportunities for teaching children to conserve are endless and can be implemented throughout our daily lives as they arise and as is appropriate for the age of your child.

As I’ve searched for ideas to “green our toddlers” I’ve found many ideas and lots of cool lists. What I haven’t found as readily is what people are doing in their homes – real life experiences.

So this post talks about things that you can do with your child. When you finish reading the ideas – click through to find out how we work these ideas into our daily lives.

Take what works for you and build from there!

1. Water – teach them to use less.
2. Teach them to recycle.
3. Teach them not to be wasteful.
4. Buy quality and teach them to take care of what they have.
5. Teach them not to litter.
6. Drink water from a cup or reusable water container.
7. Turn off the lights, unplug the “stuff”
8. Donate – when you are done with something donate to a worthy organization
9. Waste free lunches.
10. Recycle your batteries safely and/or switch to rechargeable batteries.

Other places to look for ideas:

Kids National Geographic
Naturally Savvy

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Bottled Water: Save Real Green

I’ve already written an article on why using a water filter is one of your best options for safe drinking water.  You may not be worried about the environmental impact of bottled water, that daily 60 million wattle bottles end up landfills – you’re just thirsty and want a drink of water. Let me appeal to the bottom line.

In this economy people are watching their budgets.

Let’s examine how much an average family of 4 is likely to spend annually on drinking water:
$ 200 – Using a water filtration system.
$ 520 – Home water cooler delivery.
$ 528 – 2 Gallon Jugs
$ 1755 – Drinking 3 bottles of water a day at a cost of .40 per bottle, 4 person family.

There are many cost variations. Clearly the brand you buy, how much you pay per bottle, how many bottles you drink each day… all of these factors will impact your annual cost. Use this link figure out how much your family is actually spending, this link also provided me figures that I used for the above calculations.

If you rent don’t despair, there are many portable water filtration systems available in the marketplace.

In some ways it is less convenient to use stainless steel, you have to keep the bottles clean, round them up, fill them up… but I’ve never been a fan of lugging heavy flats of water!

An average family of 4 can save $1555 per year eliminating bottled water. Add the dollar savings to the environmental impact of bottling plants, trucking, refrigeration, not to mention disposing of billions of bottles a year and perhaps you will reconsider grabbing that next plastic bottle of water.

CLICK HERE to see the great selection of stainless steel water bottles available at Amazon.

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Paperless Paper Towels

Instead of using paper towels for everyday spills and wipes – consider purchasing multi purpose clothes that you can keep on your counter to use instead.

A key for me was buying one type of cloth (I can’t keep whites white) so I opted for a easier color. They are kept on my counter folded in half in the lid of a rectangular basket, so they look neat and tidy.

Mine happened to come from Walmart – I paid under $3 for 12 of these moss green clothes. I use them to cover food in the microwave, clean up spills, wipe the kids, wipe the counters, basically any where I’d use a paper towel. Once they’ve been used – I have a bin under my sink they get put there while they wait a few days to be laundered.

I purchased 3 packs of the clothes and I have to wash them about once every 5 days.

Pictured is how they look in my home and where they are stored under my sink while they await laundering.

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