Short Description
Excerpt
Introduction
Parenting Greenly doesn’t have to be hard. It really doesn’t. It just takes a tiny shift in thinking to make a big impact. And it can be a lot more fun than you might think. And the real kicker, you will save lots of money!
When my son, Nate, started playing soccer I noticed the team mom supplied large disposable cups. Kids would take one, lose track of it by the next water break (permanent marker smeared making their names illegible) and they’d grab another one. At the end of practice, ALL those cups went into the garbage. It made me cringe.
At the next practice, I brought a stack of small, inexpensive, reusable cups – orange, blue and green (6 for $2.00 at Big Lots) – that I had purchased for Nate’s birthday party a few months before. The par-ents, or in some cases, the kids, ages 3 to 6 – wrote their names on their favorite color cup with a Sharpie. In three-year-old Johnny’s case, his mom drew a dinosaur too, making it easier for Johnny to find his cup.
I offered to bring the cups to each practice and game and to be re-sponsible for washing them. It was a small gesture, a simple thing to do. But the impact is huge really if you think about it. During our soc-cer season, ten weeks with two practices a week and one or two games on the weekend multiplied by a varying number of players (but not more than 14), we easily saved at least a couple of hundred cups destined for our city’s landfill.
Besides the obvious economic and ecological upsides, we realized other bennies. Our little soccer players loved having their own cup with their name on it. Letting them pick their favorite color aided in lo-cating said cups. Being green was actually easier and more fun for them!
I’m confident this tiny act will have a greater impact in the long run. Oh, I know I may be dreaming here, but kids might suggest bringing their own cups when they are on other teams. Maybe other moms will follow suit. I certainly got kudos from the other parents when I started this. I heard, “That’s a great idea!” and “What a smart idea.”
Some homes, schools and communities are ahead of others when it comes to the 3 Rs; Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. This book is chock full of everyday, real-life examples – easy things we can all do to protect our planet. There are no complicated explanations or tech-nical jargon that will make your eyes glaze over, because mine would too. And I won’t ask you to buy $45 organic cotton onesies or install solar panels in your spare time, but feel free to do so if you like.
And lastly, this book is being offered as an eBook because I truly didn’t want to waste the resources it would take to print and distribute it.
Read more about Parenting Greenly: Saving the planet one soccer game at a time and Martha Miller HERE.
Copyright 2010 Martha Miller. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
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