Help Your Little People Become Eco-Friendly
From activist demonstrations on the news to the eradication of plastic straws in our drinks and extreme weather conditions... climate change is already impacting on our daily lives in all kinds of ways.
Teaching our children about how to save the planet by making responsible choices every day is one way of helping to stop climate change.
Climate change can be a scary topic to tackle with children and so it’s important to broach the subject sensitively and in an age-appropriate way. Childhood is supposed to be a carefree time so it’s important not to laden your children with unnecessary worry...but incorporating easy ways of becoming more responsible should be something we all try to incorporate into our day-to-day lives.
From tiny acorns grow mighty oaks and there’s no time like the present! Going green is a lifestyle, so try these simple day-to-day ways of doing your part...
5 Easy Ways to Help Your Kids Become More Green Day-to-Day
1) Make Recycling Fun
Get the whole family involved with recycling so that it becomes second nature to your offspring! Ask children to identify what material each item of packaging is and sort into bags appropriately. A visit to the local recycling centre is a fun and immersive way of teaching little ones about the importance of recycling, and can also be educational for adults! Offer kids a ransom reward/sticker if they catch an adult throwing something away that could have been recycled- guilt can be a wonderful thing!
2) Introduce a Love of Nature
If children learn to love nature and exploring the natural world around them, they will (hopefully) want to protect it as they grow into responsible young adults. Show your kids how to find ‘treasures’ on the beach, go stomping in the woods to see the bluebells in Springtime, take them along to become involved in a volunteer/community group that plants trees, go to a conservation centre and teach them about animals whose lives have been negatively impacted by human behaviour… whatever you can do to show them how beautiful (and fragile) our planet is, the better.
3) Eco Begins at Home
Turning off the tap when brushing your teeth, turning the lights off when you leave a room and showing children the importance of turning off appliances when they are not being used are all ways in which you can encourage your child to be more environmentally conscious. Remember to lead by example and exercise good habits at home and hopefully children will soon be more ecologically aware as a matter of course.
4) Choose Locally Grown Food
Take your kids to the local farm shop to see a kaleidoscopic seasonal veg harvest. Explaining which foods are available in which season gives children a good knowledge about food cycles and how much energy it takes to grow crops, which will hopefully make them less likely to waste food as they grow into responsible adults. Teach them about food miles and the environmental impact of food; choosing locally-grown food because transporting food long distances wastes fuel and creates extra CO2.
5) Make Responsible Choices
Encourage your children to make sensible choices and explain the reasons why. For example, take short showers instead of baths to reserve water. Try not to use single-use plastic bags/packaging, and save trees by using less paper products and using both sides of the paper to draw on. Teach your children how to keep plastics out of landfill by choosing not to use disposable utensils and containers. By labelling items such as clothes, shoes, bags, pencil cases and water bottles you are more likely to get lost items returned to you so you don’t have to buy new items. By reducing your waste you will buy less and reuse more, which will help the planet and teach your children to live more responsibly!
It can be fun and easy to protect the planet! These tips help save limited resources and make being green fun, so give them a try and share your ideas with us over on Facebook and Instagram!
