Ten More Simple Things Families Can Do to Save the Earth

This is one of a series of articles inspired by readers' comments on Tess Evans' article. People wanted specific suggestions on the "green" lifestyle. As a second-generation "greenie," I felt qualified to offer several.

1. Make recycling fun for young children. As a "green" parent, you should have access to an abundance of craft projects designed to keep household waste, such as egg cartons, plastic jugs, and newspapers, out of landfills. If you didn't save the old Workbasket, Humpty Dumpty, Highlights, and other family magazines that contained instructions for these projects, check with your environmentalist friends. Challenge kids to make empty bottles into puppets and stage a play, then strip off the paper costumes and recycle the bottles. (Needless to say, your kids make paste from white flour, and color pasted-together sheets of old newspaper with earth-friendly vegetable-dye markers.)

Even "green" teens may reach a stage where they decide this kind of thing is lame and juvenile. Parents who facilitate a quick transition through this stage may be rewarded when their oh-so-very-grown-up teenagers decide family junk-recycling games are sort of fun to use on baby-sitting jobs. For young children, the main attraction of junk-recycling games is probably that older relatives do these things with them...so be prepared!

2. When recycling clothes from larger to smaller children, remember two psychological games that have worked for many parents: