Mini Stewards: Teaching the Tots to Go Green

Kids want to go green, too. They hear adults talking about caring for the planet, and they want to do their part. This is where parents, teachers and youth leaders can step in and get kids started on an earth-friendly path. As adults, we need to make the point that eco-friendly living needs to become the norm. There are many activities that will help instill this idea early while allowing your children to be directly involved in shrinking your household's carbon footprint.

Step 1: Empower them. Kids need to know that their efforts matter. This is where you do the research. You might be surprised to find small steps that lead to big changes. For instance, if every household replaced just one incandescent light with an Energy Star-approved bulb, the energy saved would provide light to three million homes for one year. Share these types of easily illustrated facts with your kids to help them draw connections between their activities and the big picture.

Step 2: Buy toys that last. Be aware that toys don't come from toy stores; they are made of resources taken from the earth, and these resources are finite. Next time you take your child shopping for a friend's gift, rate the toys on whether they are built to last or destined to quickly end up in the trash heap.

Step 3: Choose eco-friendly art supplies. Most crayons contain petroleum, which is nonrenewable, and most markers have chemicals in them like ethanol and toluene that are bad for kids to inhale. Buy beeswax crayons and water-based markers, paint and glue. Use recycled paper or scrap paper --- from junk mail to discarded wrapping paper --- for crafts.

Step 4: Reduce trash. Use towels and dishrags instead of paper towels. Reuse plastic bags, rather than buying new ones. Pack waste-free lunches --- invest in reusable lunchboxes and beverage containers, make fresh food instead of relying on prepackaged snacks, and pack all items in reusable baggies or containers.

Step 5: Take time to reflect. Once a week talk with your children about their experiences in reducing their carbon footprint. Find out what they learned and if they are ready to add another task to this effort. Identify areas for further research, and ask them to enter their reflections in a journal --- made of recycled paper, of course.

United, We Stand.

Here at Green Cleaners, we take pride in the quality of service we provide to our clients. We also do our best to offer you more than just a cleaning service - going beyond the realm of the daily grind, we hope to be able to keep you in the loop with regards to what is going on with our world and what we can do together to preserve Mother Nature.

Below you will find an excerpt from ABC's article, "Seven Continents, Seven Ways to Save the World", where ABC news assembled seven leading experts on the environment -- from scientists to businessmen -- to bring you Earth's most pressing problems. Being believers in a world capable of change, we will follow it up with some promising solutions.

Pressing Planetary Problems

Water: Too much water (from melting glaciers and ice packs) may flood the coasts. Too little water in drought-stricken Australia and Africa is caused by the changes in weather and habitat.

Forests: Up to 20 percent of our greenhouse gas problem can be attributed to loss of forests and trees, often called "the lungs of the planet" by environmentalists. Trees take in the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, and give off oxygen. But in countries with vast forest acreage, like Brazil, the forests are disappearing as people harvest the timber, plant crops and look for pasture land for animals.

Extinction: As habitats are destroyed, thousands of species may become extinct, from polar bears to vast numbers of fish species.

Power: As more and more people come onto the energy grid in emerging nations, and first world countries continue to gulp power at an alarming rate, power plants are a major source of dangerous greenhouse gases. These pressures all threaten the Earth and affect thousands of animal species, including our own.

Promising Solutions

Choose efficient vehicles: According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, a car that gets 20 miles to the gallon emits 50 tons of carbon dioxide over its lifetime. A car that gets double that mileage emits half as much -- and will save you roughly $3,000 in gas.

Drive smarter: Don't add extra weight, don't speed, don't drive aggressively and don't overuse your air conditioner, all of which decrease fuel economy.

Unplug phone chargers, televisions, VCRs and other electronics -- don't just turn them off. According to the Department of Energy, nearly 75 percent of all electricity used to power electronics in the average home is consumed by products that are switched off.

The Three Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. It seems like something from a kid's sing-a-long, but sometimes we lose sight of just how much we buy. Try buying less, and reusing and fixing things when you can instead of buying new. And for a lot of people, recycling is as easy as rolling the trash bin to the curb. Just remember to do it at work, too.

Window shop. If you have the urge to spend, try window shopping or browsing first. This helps ensure you are only buying things you really need, or really want, and you're not just impulse buying. Remember, every item in a store, no matter how small, has a footprint — so if we are conscious consumers, we can reduce our own footprint and the overall footprint of our nation.

Take a direct flight. If you need to travel by airplane, try taking a direct flight when at all possible. Your impact is reduced when you take one flight, as opposed to hopping on a couple or more passenger jets to reach your final destination. You might also feel a little less harried when you arrive, because changing planes can be a real hassle.

Go native. Use native plant species to landscape around your home or business. The plants will probably grow better in a familiar environment, and the plants may also get shipped a shorter distance to get to your local nursery. Also, use organic soil when planting — it's made using more eco-friendly methods, and uses less resources. And remember, green plants are a good way to offset carbon. So plant something, anything — it helps.

These solutions seem simple enough to accomplish, and easy for us to maintain within our lifestyle - let's do our part and encourage everyone else to hop onto the eco conscious bandwagon.

10 Tips to Save Energy (and Money) in Your Home

Hopping on the eco firendly bandwagon is not as complicated, time consuming and expensive as you think! Browse through this list of simple solutions designed to save energy and reduce carbon emissions for the planet, and at the same time save you money.

A whopping 46% of home energy use is energy loss. Here are simple ways of reversing this, mostly by changes of habit.

1. Each degree you turn down the heat saves 3% of heating costs, while each degree you raise the temperature of your air conditioner saves 3-4% of cooling costs. By changing the temperature by 2 degrees all year, you can save about 2,000 pounds of C02 a year.

2. Cook with a slow cooker or a toaster oven (or even a solar oven) to reduce electrical use from kitchen appliances. For a meal that requires one hour to cook in an electric oven, and which uses 2.7 pounds of C02, a crockpot uses 0.9 pounds of C02 for seven hours, a toaster oven takes 1.3 pounds of C02 for 50 minutes, and a microwave only 0.5 pounds of C02 for 15 minutes of cooking. A solar cooker requires NO C02!

3. Switch to a laptop instead of using a desktop computer and cut three-quarters off your electrical use. Turn off the laptop at the end of the day.

4. Switch to cold water washing and save 80 percent on energy used for laundry and save an estimated $60 a year. Hang dry your clothes instead of using the dryer and save 700 pounds of C02 a year.

5. Plug anything that can be powered by a remote control or that has a power cube transformer (little black box) into a power strip, and turn it off, and/or unplug, when not in use. (Power cubes are 60-80 percent inefficient.)

6. Turn off the lights when you aren’t using them and reduce your direct lighting energy use by 45 percent. Stop using heat-producing halogen lamps (they can also be fire hazards). Install occupancy or motion sensors on outdoor lights.

7. Switch to compact fluorescent from regular incandescent bulbs and use 60 percent less energy per bulb and save 300 pounds of C02 a year.

8. Wrap your water heater in an insulation blanket and save 1,000 pounds of C02 a year. Insulate your hot water pipes.

9. Use public transportation whenever possible, carpool, shop locally, and ideally switch to a hybrid or energy-efficient car (if you haven’t already).

10. Keep your tires inflated to improve gas mileage by 3 percent. Every gallon you save also saves 20 pounds of C02 emissions.

Thanks to climatecrisis.net and The Home Energy Diet for many of the carbon savings figures.