Eco Friendly Parenting: Teaching Your Kids to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Repair

We have known for decades that the climate was changing, and for even longer that peak oil was approaching. Trying to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and our impact on the natural world is not something that has begun with current generations. And yet we continue to ramp up development and to live in a world where remaining steady is called stagnating, while constantly increasing our consumption is called healthy growth.

So what can we do to make sure this message is not passed on to our kids? How can we teach them to conserve and nurture the world we live in?

There are books for all ages that can help give kids a sense of empowerment to contribute to "saving the world". George Saves the World by Lunchtime , by Jo Readman, is an excellent example for younger children (pre-school to early grade school), while The New 50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth (Sophie Javna) is an excellent read for older children and even their parents. And there are many others.

But what is the main way children learn? By watching and doing. They will learn to care about the planet by watching you do it. So how can you begin to make your lifestyle more eco-friendly? Chances are, if you are concerned about this at all, you are already paying some attention to things like taking your own bags to pack groceries in and cutting down on your electricity use in your home.

But, research shows that personal values are a fairly poor predictor of actual resource use, and that location is a much better one. So if you live in a major city, chances are that your personal resource use is similar to that of the people living around you.

However, that doesn't mean you are helpless to make a difference. Of course not. It just means that you need to be aware of the traps inherent in living where you do. For instance, in areas where people typically drive their cars to work, transport is the single most significant area of energy use in the average home.

If this is you, making a commitment to taking more public transport of walking more could make a big difference. But don't do it on your own, involve your children. Help them decide how often you will leave the car at home each week, and on which days. If doing so is going to prevent some challenges in getting them around and still getting where you need to go yourself, involve them in coming up with solutions.

Another large area of energy use for many homes is hot water. If you have a standard electric hot water system, it might account for as much as one third of your household power bills. If you can get your kids to help you do a home power audit and then figure out how you can save some money on electricity, you could commit those savings to upgrading to a solar hot water system. Of course, you can also take interim steps like getting everyone in the family to use an egg timer to take shorter showers. Again, involving the kids in the power audit so they can see how this has an effect is likely help them engage.

Whatever you are already doing to be eco-friendly in your life, make sure that your kids are aware of why do it, whether it is composting, growing your own vegies, shopping at the local farmers market or turning off the light when you leave a room. And whenever possible, get them involved in doing it too.

• Give them their own plot in the vegetable garden, or let them choose some of the foods that you grow and help to harvest them (depending on their ages, don't expect to be able to leave them to do all the watering and weeding and still have anything to harvest at when the time comes!).
• Take them with you to the farmers market and involve them in discussions with the stall holders about where they do their farming (how local is local?).

Or for younger children:

• show them the difference between a home grown tomato and a store bought one,
• let them help feed the worms in your worm farm, or
• explain that it's okay for them to help you clean the bathroom, because your cleaning spray is just watered down vinegar, not filled with harsh chemicals.

You don't have to make every moment into a lecture though. Doing is more important than understanding, for the young child especially. Let them live the experience of popping outside to pick some greens for the salad and never throwing anything into the rubbish bin that can be reused, repaired or recycled. Let them see you repairing items rather than just throwing them away, passing on old toys and clothes to the charity store and walking to the store when you just have to pick up some milk and bread.