Omaha By Design: Omaha, Only Better

Editor’s Note: This is the fifth in a continuing series of articles provided by the Green Omaha Coalition’s Green Neighborhood Council. The Green Omaha Coalition is dedicated to promoting a healthy, sustainable community through partnerships, policy and smart solutions. Omaha by Design is a founding partner. This month’s author is Alaina Hickman.

By Alaina Hickman
When I became pregnant with my first child, I recall fretting to my grandmother over how expensive having a baby would be. In her aged wisdom she replied with a smile, “Dear, the only thing you really need is a dresser drawer and some cloth diapers. If you don’t have any cloth diapers, then you can use dishrags.” Looking back on this pearl of wisdom, it has occurred to me that my grandmother captured the essence of raising green children: simplicity. As I walk through the aisles of the local shopping center and see all the fancy toys made out of newly manufactured plastic, I can’t but help hear her words ringing in my head.

Our environment and the way we use it is growing more and more important. With food shortages, landfills of massive proportion, decreasing amounts of fossil fuels and impending global warming, it is our responsibility as parents to raise our children to be conscious of how they consume. My husband and I have always felt it important to raise our children with an awareness of the environment, but what we weren’t expecting was that in so doing, it actually made our lives easier and less expensive. Here are some ways for you to green up your lives and, at the same time, teach your children valuable environmental lessons.

1. No-birthday-present parties for kids reduce the amount of plastic toy clutter in your house. The parents of other children will really appreciate not having to spend $5-$10 on a toy. Handmade birthday cards are more memorable and easier to scrapbook than molded hunks of plastic. When you do purchase gifts, buy green. Some easy green gifts are books, toys made from wood or bamboo, or craft kits like paper airplanes or origami.

2. For every new piece of clothing or household item produced, there is also some waste produced. That is why it’s important to teach kids not to just throw away what they don’t want but to donate it instead. Great web sites for secondhand clothes and other children’s items are www.freecycle.org and www.rerunsrfun.net.

3. There is a great web site dedicated exclusively to handmade items, www.etsy.com, which supports craftsmen and artists and can direct you to local sellers. Don’t forget about your local thrift store! Buying secondhand saves money and cuts down on the amount of new products produced, which also cuts down on the waste produced. Things bought secondhand or handmade are just as good as things bought new.

4. Find durable and sensible lunch boxes that are made to last for years at www.laptoplunches.com. Using these will drastically cut down on the brown and plastic bags that inevitably end up in the trash.

5. Raising green children also means teaching them how to be green consumers. Buying secondhand and handmade is a great start, but that doesn’t cover the weekly grocery trip. Buying in bulk greatly reduces the amount of packaging and saves you money. Organic foods are prepared with much fewer chemicals. The chemicals used in regular food build up in ground soil and eventually diminish the amount of usable land for foods. Foods that have traveled a long way to the store did so by burning fossil fuels, and foods from factory farms are the leading producers of methane gas in this country. So when you can try to shop local, organic and plant based for the health of the earth and your family.

6. Educating children on green living can be a family experience that gives lifelong lessons on living independently. Beneath our kitchen table is a worm bin in which we put our dinner leftovers and other foods that have sat in the fridge too long. My youngest daughter is absolutely fascinated by the worms, and we often work on them together. My children are able to see how nature really works when they put their food scraps in the worm bin and watch the worms make healthy fertilized soil. Then we use the soil in our garden. My kids actually get to see and experience the full circle of nature and, in the end, get to reap the “fruits” of it. Part of being green is being self-sustainable, which is not often taught in schools today. So even if having a box of worms in your kitchen is just not your thing, gardening with your children in the backyard or even a pot on the table can be fun and give them a sense of pride for having grown their own food.

There isn’t a trick to raising kids green. All you have to do is become mindful of what you consume and throw away. Being green is just living more simply, not spending as much money and being more self-sustaining, all of which would benefit us, our families, our communities and our earth.

This month’s Green Living Workshop, “Growing Up Green,” will be held Saturday, June 28, from 10 a.m. to noon at the Omaha Children’s Museum, 500 S. 20th St. (The workshop is free, but if you wish to visit the museum afterward, you’ll need to pay admission). For more information or to R.S.V.P., send an email to wasserfarms@gmail.com. The event, sponsored by the Green Omaha Coalition’s Green Neighborhood Council, is free and open to the public.