Caring about your environment is a family thing and that means it must include your kids, too. Regardless of their age, your children can start learning what it means to live a healthier, more natural and environmentally friendly lifestyle. If you start instilling green values in your kids now, they are more likely to continue a healthier lifestyle into adulthood. Here are some tips on how to go green together today:
- Water: Teach family members to keep the water flow to a pencil-thin stream when using the sink.
- Energy: Remind everyone to turn off the lights when leaving a room and to leave the lights off during the day. Natural sunlight is generally good enough.
- Toxic Exposure: Cleaning up messy little hands? Be sure to avoid anti-bacterial hand soaps and hand sanitizers that contain triethanolamine. Anti-bacterial hand soaps have been proven to cause more harm than good because they kill beneficial bacteria as well as the bad stuff and may be leading to super-strains of bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. Hand sanitizers that contain the ingredient triethanolamine can damage liver and kidneys.
- Waste: Recycle glass, aluminum, plastic, newspapers, magazines and junk mail. You can present it as a game that involves sorting out the different types and putting them in their special bins for points. Assign a daily chore to help with the sorting and recycling.
- Make recycle bins out of card board boxes or plastic bins
- Create picture labels on each bin to help guide little ones to the correct place for the materials to be recycled: paper, glass, plastic, aluminum. Tape on the front of the box.
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