Parent Talk Today

You Can Recycle THAT?

It's easy to think of the usual suspects when it comes to teaching your kids about recycling: newspapers, bottles, cans.

But how about also recycling tennis shoes, computers, packing peanuts, cell phones, toothbrushes, motor oil, formal dresses, eyeglasses... Whew! The possibilities are exciting.   

Visit Forecast Earth to learn more and check out their terrific article, "10 Things to Recycle That You Never Thought You Could."

Hey Kids (and Parents)! Cancel a Catalog and Help Save the Earth

What's better for the Earth than recycling unwanted catalogs? Not getting a mailbox full of them in the first place. This morning on the Today Show, I learned about a new website that is making it easy to just say no to unwanted catalogs.

In an effort to help the environment, elementary-school kids at The Park School in Brookline, Mass. — with the help of catalogchoice.org — canceled 4,175 unwanted catalog subscriptions in a single month. That's a lot of trees and energy saved!

My 12-year-old son, Matt, just saw the movie An Inconvenient Truth in his 6th-grade science class, and it made a real impression on him — and sparked some interesting dinner-table conversation. It's so easy for kids — and adults — to think that there's not much one person can do. Well, the individual kids at The Park School certainly did their part, and it added up to something meaningful.

I'm going to start collecting our catalogs and asking Matt to go to this website to request that they stop coming. (You are asked to type in the catalog code when making your request, for easier identification.) That's one small thing our family can do to help.

Dreaming of a Green Christmas

I'm happy to welcome guest blogger Leah Ingram today. Leah is a magazine journalist and author as well as a blogger on The Lean Green Family. Be sure to check out her blog!

I'm Dreaming of a Green Christmas

It shouldn't come as any surprise that this year is going to be the greenest Christmas (and Hanukkah) of all time--at least for the folks on my "nice" list. My mission in nearly everything I do and buy this holiday season is to have green in mind, which hopefully won't cost me a lot of green.

For starters I'm still searching the Internet for the best recycled paper holiday cards. (If you know of a website, please let me know.) Hallmark stores sell recycled paper greetings, but only in single cards, not the boxed kind for the holidays, though you can order (PRODUCT) RED recycled cards for the holidays from Hallmark.com. Worse-case scenario: I print my family newsletter on recycled paper, send it in a recycled envelope, and skip the cards altogether (though I don't think my family newsletter will go over well with my clients).

As far as holiday wrapping goes, I don't plan to use it this year. Instead, I'm going to hit my local Wal-Mart this week, and stock up on their $1 reusable bags that say "Paper or Plastic? Neither" (pictured at left). These bags will become my default packaging for holiday gifts.

With regard to the gifts, I'm going for items in the simplest packaging, such as CDs, DVDs and video games, which come in containers that double as storage vessels. Also, I found some cool recycled rubber doormats on Target.com which are right in my price range. And, as I'd blogged earlier, I am doing the lion's share of my shopping via the Internet to save fuel (though the family and I did spend this past Sunday at the mall, and we will be one of those crazies up at 5:00 a.m. and in line on black Friday).