Green parties for kids

I just threw three birthday parties for my two sons in the past two weeks, and I learned a thing or two along the way. Here are some ideas for throwing a green party for children, and making the party more fun for the kids along the way.

1. Keep it small.
Limiting the number of guests will keep your child from getting overwhelmed, which helps them enjoy their party more. It also means you will have less waste and less pressure to put on a big gala. Also, fewer guests means you will more likely be able to use dishes, silverware, and other supplies that you already without having to buy disposables.

2. Keep it simple.
A short party in your backyard or at a park is all young children want. If it is a hot day, set up a sprinkler for a great time. If it is winter, set up a few games like "pin the tail on the donkey." Cake and ice cream can be the main event at any kids party. Keeping in mind what will make your child and their guests happy is key. While we want their parents to be comfortable and have a nice time, it is not about impressing them.

3. Keep it real.
Avoiding disposable products is easier than you might think. We were planning on using plasticware this weekend when we fed 20 family members, but then we counted our silverware and found we had plenty. You can almost always find a non-disposable alternative, like using cloth tablecloths instead of paper or plastic and using mason jars instead of plastic cups. And there are a lot of low-impact alternatives now when you do need to supplement with disposable stuff. We used compostable paper plates that we bought at regular supermarket and we're composting them.

4. No gifts please.
For the past few years we have put "no gifts please" on the invitations for our children's birthday parties with their friends. I like this because it takes the pressure off of parents bringing their child to the party, and it makes the party about having fun and celebrating, not on getting stuff. It also really reduces the amount of plastic we generate. Don't get me wrong, we do not want to deprive our children of the joy of gifts. Our children still get presents and really enjoy opening presents, but those presents usually come from us, their grandparents and other family.

5. Green favors.
I don't think children really care if they get party favors, and let's face it, plastic toys from the dollar store aren't really very much fun. If you do want to do party favors, think of some green choices. Small plants to watch grow or seeds that children can plant are great favors.

What are some other ideas for throwing green parties for children?

House of Dreams

Have you ever noticed that when you say your dreams out loud and make them known to the universe, they sometimes just happen? I'm starting to experiment with this, or at least pay attention to it.

A couple of months ago my husband and I started talking about wanting a piano. I used to play, and our son is interested in playing. We can’t afford a new one, so we were looking for one second hand. I mentioned this to my mom, as she is a great networker, but I told her that we would not be able to get a piano until we moved into our new house.

Last week, without ever talking to my mom about it, my aunt emailed all the cousins asking if any of us want the family piano that belonged to my great-grandparents. It is a baby grand piano, the very piano my parents had when I was a child and on which I learned to play, and a cherished piece of family history. I am the only one who wants it, and my aunt has offered to have it moved for us this weekend, the very weekend we are moving into our new house!

Another dream that I have had for years was to have a house in the woods with a pond for my children to play in. I pictured a really joyful outdoorsy life, with barefoot kids playing in the mud and being outside a lot. My husband and I have talked about this dream as we've moved from Vermont to Los Angeles and back to Michigan...always thinking about "someday" when we find a place to put down roots. Well we're finally here.

Since that time, the reality of living close to town also has become a bigger priority, and has weaved itself into our dreams. It is important to us to be close enough for my husband to commute to work by bike, and for us to walk our children to school and ride our bikes to the beach. And we want neighbors. So we are buying a house in town. This is the house we may stay in for a really long time, and I was thinking this week about how (sadly) maybe we were giving up that dream about having the house with a pond. That's when I realized, this house HAS a pond. It was made by people, not nature, but it is a pond nonetheless. And it has a little waterfall and our boys absolutely adore it. It also has woods, a tiny little area, but enough for little boys to play in. Maybe this house doesn't look exactly like the one in my dream, but the dream changed over time. It still can be the house with a pond where we raise our barefoot children and have a really joyful earthy life.

These are just two examples that have come to me this week, I'm going to start paying more attention. And I'm going to start saying more of my dreams out loud! The universe seems to like that.

Can you think of dreams like this that have come true. Little ones, or big ones?

Creating a Clearing

I read a book a couple of years ago filled with stories about the authors experiences in cultures around the world, and lessons for living a more fulfilling life (I really wish I could remember the name of it!). One of the stories came back to me today vividly. In it the author traveled to Norway to visit a friend, and it was striking as he described how simple and basic his friends apartment was decorated, and the apartments of others he met while there. He found that while his friend had everything he needed - a couch, lamp, bed, clothes, dishes - he ONLY had what he needed. Nothing extra. For example, he had 6 glasses and 6 place settings, because that is the most people he would expect to be entertaining at once, but no more than that. No extras. His closet had only a few nice outfits there. He lived comfortably, but did not have any clutter. No excess.

The concept struck me as so liberating. Why have stuff cluttering your home when you will only use it once in a while, or not at all? Why spend money on things unless you really need them? It is very practical, and yet missing from the consumer culture here in the U.S.

This is at the forefront of my mind right now because we are in the process of packing up the tiny home we have been living in for the past 10 months and moving into the house we are buying. Our current house was only meant to be temporary, and the basement is completely full of unpacked boxes and furniture and toys that we had at our old house. The fact that we have not used most of the stuff down there makes me realize that we don't really NEED it. And it doesn't feel good to live on top of all that stuff, it is definitely bad feng shui. It is even hard to think very clearly sometimes when I've been in the house for long.

I'm also taking part in a workshop called Mondo Beyondo about following your dreams, and one of the lessons is to create a clearing in your life. This clearing can be clearing more time in your schedule, or literally clearing space and organizing your living space. The idea is that making this clearing frees up your energy and declutters your mind to allow something new to emerge. New opportunities, new space for doing art, or whatever it is that you need in your life that now has room to live.

The idea of clearing away a lot of that extra stuff and living more simply is so appealing to me. Living with just what we need would be freeing. If we don't need to buy so much we can work less. We can spend less time taking care of all of our stuff and more time doing the things we really like to do.

It is also a key component of living a green lifestyle. Buy less stuff. Period. Less waste, less energy, less pollution. We have to shake this weird concept that more is better. More stuff just takes up space.

We move in one week. Through this move I am making a clearing and look forward to seeing what new wonderful things come.

Safe Sunscreen

Today it was supposed to rain, instead we got a beautiful sunny, 70 degree day. So we headed to the beach. A 30 minute drive got us to the Leelanau State Park in Northport. We hiked about a mile through a cool, shady beech-sugar maple forest and another 100 yards through sand dunes to the edge of Lake Michigan. This is Cathead Bay, a beach I walked many times as a child with my dear friend Kristin. Her family's beach was visible in the distance to us today.

With two fair-skinned and sunburn-prone boys, I'm always looking for shade, pulling out hats and slathering on sunscreen. Today was no different, except that Emerson, being three years old, refused to wear sunscreen (and clothes for that matter).

To make sunscreen more appealing, I pulled out the Coppertone 50 SPF sunscreen spray I bought last year in a moment of weakness. Emerson loves the spray, it tickles you know. I slathered Charlie with the good stuff, Alba Botanica brand 18 SPF mineral sunscreen for kids. I scored that one at the food co-op last winter on sale. So what is the difference?

Thanks to Environmental Working Group's 2010 Sunscreen Guide, I can easily figure it out.

First, the Coppertone spray contains the chemical oxybenzone, which is a potential hormone disruptor that penetrates the skin. It is one of the ingredients the report recommends we avoid. Also, spray releases tiny droplets into the air that may not be safe to breathe. Not good.

The Alba lotion, on the other hand, contains Titanium Dioxide as the active ingredient, which is effective at blocking out UVA without penetrating the skin and entering the body. That's a good thing.

There is a lot of other great information and tips in the report, it is worth checking out. I'm definitely not going to use the spray lotion again, and I'll avoid oxybenzone altogether, opting for mineral sunscreens instead. Other take homes for me from the report: start our family on vitamin D supplements and bring our shade umbrella next time. It will be worth it, even though we'll have to shlep it through the woods on the way to the beach.


Charlie all protected from the sun.

Cooling off the old fashioned way

We don't have air conditioning in this little house we are renting, which seemed like a fine idea when we first moved in because 1) we live in Northern Michigan so one would think it would not get too hot, and 2) we were planning to have moved on to more permanent digs by now. It turns out that this house is not the most efficient, and it gets hot pretty quickly. So imagine our discomfort when it reached 94 degrees this week, and 89 degrees inside the house.

Instead of running out and buying an air conditioner, I ran out and got us an inflatable pool. We put the pool on the deck, filled it with ice cold water from the hose, and within minutes two overheated boys (and one overheated mama) were happy as could be splashing on the back deck. We have repeated this ritual every day as the heat spikes in the afternoon. And it is lovely.

Not having central air is definitely the green thing to do. It saves 33 gallons of gas each month, not to mention saving us $500 each year. But there is also something to be said for feeling the heat of summer. It's something I want my children to experience. I don't mean that I want them to suffer and feel uncomfortable. Rather, I want them to know the pleasure of splashing around in a kiddie pool. I want them to seek the cool wind off the lake to escape the heat, rather than closing themselves up indoors. I want them to know the sweet relief of the first cool breeze in the evening, and to hear the crickets at night outside our open windows. I want them to be a part of their world, their environment, and not trying to escape it. That is worth it to me, even when it is 89 degrees inside.

Green Cuisine: Mexican Quinoa Salad

Photo credit: net_efekt on Flickr

My friend Kyna has been somewhat of a food inspiration to me recently. After a delicious vegetarian dinner at her house in the fall, I decided to take the plunge and cook vegetarian at home. This week, she whipped up a nice little quinoa salad for lunch and I was hooked. So tonight, I made this:

Mexican Quinoa Salad
-3 cups cooked quinoa
-1 can black beans, rinsed
-1 cup corn
-2 tomatoes, diced
-1 small red onion, diced
-1 avocado, diced
-Salt to taste

I also tossed together some local organic greens with locally made Natalie Robyn's cherry vinegarette dressing.

Quinoa took less than 15 minutes to cook. I usually make this dish with rice, which takes 45 minutes. Not only did this save time, that's a lot of cooktop energy saved. Another great thing about quinoa, it's a complete protein, making it a great addition to vegetarian dishes. I'm going to try to soak the seeds in water (for just 2-4 hours apparently) and let it sprout, boosting its nutritional value even more. Am I gushing about quinoa? Yes, it's true. And you will too.

It was a delicious meal, very satisfying and so easy. And it was completely plant based (and all organic). It feels good to feed my family something so pure. And with the oil spill weighing so heavily on my mind, it feels good to eat in a low impact way.

Here is what dinner looked like. Mmmgood.

Week 4: Cold water laundry

Photo credit: Average Jane on Flickr

Washing laundry in cold water seems easy enough. It saves energy and supposedly cold water gets the clothes just as clean as warm. But on some level it is just hard to turn the dial from warm to cold, especially with things like soiled cloth diapers and guest room sheets.

Ultimately though, I'm a numbers girl. I searched around and found that TreeHugger had done all the math for me here.

According to that article, 90 percent of the energy used in washing machines is to heat the water. With an electric washer, using hot water instead of cold is the equivalent of driving 9 miles for each load of laundry and releases nearly 9 pounds of CO2 with each load.

In one year, washing in cold water instead of hot:

-Saves 3360 pounds of CO2

-Is equivalent to driving your car 3431 miles less

That is big energy savings and greenhouse gas reductions for such a simple step. It also saves you money. I learned here that washing in cold water also can save you $400 annually (with an electric water heater) and more than $300 (with a gas water heater).

There are detergents made especially for cold water, I may experiment with those if necessary, but for now I'll use my Ecos detergent and see how it goes.

As for the instinct we have to wash our most soiled things in hot water, there is something to this. A CBS News report found that hot water is better at killing dust mites, dog dander, and pollen than is cold water. So for those with allergies, it may be harder to give up the hot water.

Composting takes off

This afternoon we took the boys to the annual BBQ at Northern Michigan College here in Traverse City. It was a simple buffet style meal of veggies, potato salad, cole slaw, and either a Buffalo meat burger or hot dog. The remarkable thing about the meal was that we composted almost everything - the paper plates and cups, plastic forks (the compostable kind), napkins, and all the food scraps. To make sure these things did not end up in the garbage, a student volunteer was stationed at each trash area telling people what to compost. I was so intrigued I started asking the volunteer about who was doing this, was this a NMC program? She didn't know the answers. Hmm...

As we were leaving, we took a short-cut that took us right by the garbage truck. We lingered briefly because we have a three-year-old boy and, well, garbage trucks are fascinating. There was a man working, and I casually asked him about the composting that day. He said that all of the scraps are going to his farm, Food for Thought, where he has an industrial composting facility. He also said that usually the BBQ generates hundreds of trash cans full of trash, but this day they had only brought back trash about a dozen times. The rest was compost.

It turns out that I had just read about this man, Timothy Young, and his farm in the latest Traverse Magazine. They are doing a lot more than compost, but the composting blew me away. Northern Michigan is such a fertile place for green innovation. It's exciting to be here.

Week 3: Meat free meals

Photo credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/32599519@N02/ / CC BY 2.0

In November I stopped cooking meat at home. I had been wanting to reduce our meat consumption for a while, but it just seemed so hard to change all of my regular recipes for new vegetarian ones. It turned out that it wasn't as hard as I had feared to kick the meat habit.

I started with a one-month commitment, figuring we could go without until the Thanksgiving turkey. I don't keep secrets from my husband, but I made an exception and didn't tell him we about eating meat for the first week. I wanted to make sure this commitment was going to stick, and I figured once I got a few tasty meatless meals in him he would not protest.

It turns out I had nothing to fear. I had to step out of my recipe comfort zone (some may refer to as a rut) and find new ones, but I discovered many easy, delicious, and satisfying meals that my husband and three-year old both love. I even made lasagna for my in-laws with vegetarian sausage that they raved about. Now we've been doing this for 6 months and it has just become our routine.

There is a wonderful effort called the PB&J Campaign, a campaign to reduce the amount of animal products people eat by encouraging people to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead of meat and dairy. Really, any plant-based meal will do, but a PB&J is something pretty familiar to even the biggest meat-lovers, and tasty too. It is a fun way to think about reducing your footprint, but the impact is quite significant. According to their website:

-Each time you have a plant-based meal like a PB&J sandwich you reduce your carbon dioxide emissions over an animal-based meal by 2.5 pounds for lunch.

-If you have a PB&J instead of red meat, you reduce your carbon footprint by 3.5 pounds.

-You also save a whopping 133 gallons of water at lunch, and 24 square feet of land from deforestation and pollution.

Holy cow!

The numbers don't work out perfectly, as my family does eat dairy and eggs, but on average my family is saving:
-22.5 pounds of carbon each day, 540 pounds each month, and about 7000 pounds per year;
-7128 gallons of water per week, or 373,000 per year; and
-1296 square feet of land each week.

That's nothing to shake a stick at.

I'm thoroughly convinced that anybody can do this. You get to make rules that work for your family, whether you want to remove meat at one meal per week or avoid all animal products each July. In our family, we don't eat meat at home, but we eat whatever we want at restaurants (we eat out about once a week). We also occasionally cook meat for visitors and on special occasions, like that Thanksgiving turkey. We also happen to really like peanut butter and jelly.

Week 2: No More Drilling

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/ / CC BY 2.0

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has left me feeling depressed and helpless. We do not even know the extent of the damage, as oil continues to gush from the ocean floor and make its way towards the coast. When all is said and done, it will be one of the worst environmental disasters in history, and it is heartbreaking to watch it happen.

I want to do something. So I'm getting involved with the Sierra Club. I've worked with them in Michigan and know that they do great work, combining local knowledge with a strong volunteer base and support from state and national expert staff. Today I donated money to help with their Gulf Coast efforts, and I plan to join in rallies and letter writing campaigns to send a strong message to our leaders in Washington calling for:

-The oil spill to be cleaned up quickly, and BP, Halliburton and the other companies held accountable; and

-An end to all new offshore drilling proposals.

This disaster shows us just how dangerous offshore drilling is. We have the technologies and know what it will take to reduce our oil consumption and move away from fossil fuels. Many of the solutions to our dependence on oil--like moving towards more fuel efficient vehicles, smart land use changes, and clean energy like wind power--will create jobs and improve quality of life. I am certainly willing to make further changes in my life to reduce oil consumption and put more of my energy into pushing for change, especially when I see so clearly the impacts of this oil addiction.

So the action item for week 2 is to take action. I spent the past decade of my life as a professional environmental advocate, and I have seen first hand the power of people to make changes happen, even when up against powerful special interests. But we have to make our voices heard. As a busy mother of two, I know how hard it is to make the time to contact our elected officials. But it really does make a difference.

For more information on what the Sierra Club is doing: http://action.sierraclub.org/site/PageNavigator/adv_oilspill

Week 1: No More Coffee Cups

Image: Dino De Luca / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

No, I'm not giving up coffee. This experiment is not about torturing myself (or my children who notice when mommy does not get her cup of liquid patience). But I am going to go about coffee differently.

There was a time when I, working in an office, would buy a cup of coffee almost every day. Sometimes more than one cup per day. It usually came in a paper cup. It really didn't feel like I was doing anything really bad. I mean, one paper cup won't hurt anything right? Unfortunately, there were about a billion other people with my paper coffee cup habit thinking the same thing.

Here's the problem:

• In 2010, an estimated 23 billion paper coffee cups will be used. It takes 9 million trees and enough energy to power 77,000 homes to make these cups.
  
• Paper coffee cups are lined with a plastic resin called polyethylene, so they can hold hot liquid. With this coating they cannot be recycled. All of these coffee cups end up in landfills.
• What's worse, in the landfill the paper cups decompose and release methane, a greenhouse gas that traps even more heat than carbon dioxide.
  
• Most coffee cups are not made of recycled paper, as recycled paper is typically not strong enough to hold liquid.

(See http://www.sustainabilityissexy.com/facts.html for more fascinating and terrifying figures)

Suddenly, my coffee has a bitter aftertaste.

My solution: Well, for starters I'm going to make my coffee at home and drink it from a mug. I've been doing this for a while now to save time and money, and I enjoy it just as much. On the weekends, I will still treat myself to a fancy coffee. But I will do it in a reusable mug. One study found that I'll have to use my stainless steel mug 24 times for it to be more environmentally friendly than paper cups. That's 3 months of weekend coffees for me.

There is a paper coffee cup sitting on my desk right now. I bought it this morning, and I plan to kick the habit today. I'll keep the coffee habit though.

Money saved*:
$624 per year
(Making my own coffee vs. 3 lattes and 2 coffees out per week)

Resources saved*:
350 cups per year
140 pounds greenhouse gases per year
21.6 pounds of solid waste per year
one tree every seven years

*My husband is making his coffee at work, and joining me with reusable mugs, so these numbers all double for our family.


Sources: http://www.edf.org/documents/523_starbucks.pdf p.25 Report of the Alliance for Environmental Innovation and Starbucks 2000 (with the Environmental Defense Fund) (Although this report is a good estimate of the carbon emissions of the average coffee cup, the current Starbucks coffee cup has a smaller carbon footprint because Starbucks has added 10% post-consumer recycled content to it cups.)

The year of green and simple living

It is time to make commitments, to throw down the gauntlet, to start walking the walk. Today I embark on a year of becoming more green and living more simply.

I think it will be an interesting experiment to see how my family can reduce our footprint on the planet. I have a feeling we'll be saving money and enjoying life more too. We are starting where we are today. Starting....NOW!