Many kids are naturally curious about the Earth and taking care of the environment. You can do good green habits as a family. You can make small, simple, easy habit changes that all add up to a more environmentally friendly lifestyle.

Here is 10 ways to teach your kids how to be green:

1. Keep your kids busy with activities that don’t promote consumption or waste: walks on the beach, bike rides to a public playground, bus trips to a museum and regular stops at the public library.
2. Make gardening a family activity. Eating means no gas is required to ship those blue-ribbon tomatoes.Good for you: “Kids with exposure to gardening programs do better on science tests, do better socially and develop a sense of responsibility,” says Charlie Nardozzi, senior horticulturist with the National Gardening Association. “And they develop better eating habits.”
3. Take the green lead. Your children will pick up habits from you, so try to conserve .Your kids learn the most from you. If you would like to see certain traits in your children, then lead by example. Take quick showers - you can use a timer - turn off lights, televisions and appliances when you leave the room, and switch to more efficient light bulbs.
4. Participate in cleanup days at a beach or park. Use those outdoor trash cans! Never litter. Keep our waterways clean. When you visit a park or beach, be sure you deposit your trash in containers and volunteer at some state and national cleanups. Read more

We all want to help the environment, but many times we are too busy with our daily lives to make changes that we think are needed to develop a more sustainable lifestyle and a more environmentally friendly culture.
Therefore, you can make small, simple, easy habit changes that all add up to a more environmentally friendly lifestyle.

Eco Habit Tip 1: Drive Less. Driving less doesn’t mean you have to stay home. Try combining driving with alternative modes of transportation:
- If you live close to school, walk or bike. If you live far away, carpool.
- Take the bus.
- Shop by phone or mail.
- Drive electric/hybrid cars instead of gas-guzzlers.
- Plan all trips. Plan the timing and the route of your trips such that you will avoid being caught in the “thick” of traffic.

Eco Habit Tip 2: Eco-Friendly Eating. Planting a garden and buying seasonal fruits and vegetables at Farmers’ Markets, is both healthier and better for the environment. Unfortunately, many big food processors, even ones that grow organic fruits and vegetables tend to neglect basic, good for the earth, farming techniques like crop rotation. Organic fertilizers are trucked in and produce is trucked out to be sold across the country using precious fossil fuels and contributing to air pollution. Avoid McDonald’s. Well, not just McDonald’s, but they’re the worst. Not only is their food nutritionally empty, and actually harmful to your health, but they are one of the worst polluters and destroyers of the environment. Read more

If Valentines Day is an essential day for you or the one you love; then you can show a bit of love for the environment by carefully considering what you buy.

Here are a few distinctive gift ideas that make a positive ecological impact:

Give Organic Flowers
Conventionally grown flowers are often dangerous to the environment and the workers involved with growing them. An option to giving cut flowers is seeking out locally grown live houseplants. There are plenty of flowering varieties available, and they are beautiful, year-round gifts, which add vibrancy to homes and offices. One of the advantages to purchasing plants grown close to where you live is that you are not contributing to the resource use and greenhouse gas emissions of air shipping, which is common with imported flowers.

Give Natural perfumes and fragrances
Many perfume fragrances are synthetic and often made from toxic petrochemicals derived from crude oil. There are more earth friendly alternatives and it is easy to make your own natural perfume too. Read more

Global warming is the next big impact that will bring about a change in the weather patterns. By definition, Global Warming is the increase in average temperature that gradually warms the Earth’s atmosphere. It is a phenomenon, which has been on the rise but in the last century, the increase in the levels have been alarming.

Global warming is a dramatically urgent and serious problem.

The good news is we don’t have to wait for technical solutions to reduce the impact of these big offenders. We have the technology and ingenuity to reduce the threat of global warming today. We just have to start using them. Here are 25 simple ways to do your part to start making a difference now.

At Home:

1. Use water efficiently

Saving water around the home is simple. Municipal water systems require a lot of energy to purify and distribute water to households, and saving water, especially hot water, can lower greenhouse gas emissions. Look for products with EPA’s WaterSense label; these products save water and perform as well or better than their less efficient counterparts. There are also simple actions you can take to save water: Be smart when irrigating your lawn or landscape; only water when needed and do it during the coolest part of the day, early morning is best. Turn the water off while shaving or brushing teeth. Do not use your toilet as a waste basket - water is wasted with each flush. And did you know a leaky toilet can waste 200 gallons of water per day? Repair all toilet and faucet leaks right away.

2. Change Five Lights

Replace your five most frequently used lights or the bulbs in them with ones that have earned the Energy Star and you’ll use less energy, which means less pollution from power plants. Your household will also be saving about 700 pounds of carbon dioxide a year and save $90 a year in energy costs (If every household in the country did it — we would save a trillion pounds of greenhouse gases.) Take the “Change a Light Pledge” and change at least one light in your home.

3. Use Less Heat and Air Conditioning

Adding insulation to your walls and attic, and installing weather stripping or caulking around doors and windows can lower your heating costs more than 25 percent, by reducing the amount of energy you need to heat and cool your home. Turn down the heat while you’re sleeping at night or away during the day, and keep temperatures moderate at all times. Setting your thermostat just 2 degrees lower in winter and higher in summer could save about 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide each year.

4. Use the “Off” Switch

Save electricity and reduce global warming by turning off lights when you leave a room, and using only as much light as you need. And remember to turn off your television, video player, stereo and computer when you’re not using them.
It’s also a good idea to turn off the water when you’re not using it. While brushing your teeth, shampooing the dog or washing your car, turn off the water until you actually need it for rinsing. You’ll reduce your water bill and help to conserve a vital resource. Read more

A recent BBC Horizon documentary (transcript) raised the issue of ‘global dimming’ and argued that this ‘killer’ phenomena’s newly-recognised existence would lead to huge re-assessments of future global warming. As part of the hyperbole, the process of global dimming was linked very clearly to the famines in Ethiopia in the 1980s and the implication was left that worse was to come. Media reports with headlines like “Fossil Fuel Curbs May Speed Global Warming” swiftly followed. So what’s the real story?

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• Global dimming is indicated by measurements over land areas in many regions in the world and may therefore be a real phenomena. Though there are serious issues with the quality of some of the data (birds drinking out of uncovered evaporation pans, drift and inhomogeneities in the solar radiation measuring instruments), in the most global assessment, Beate Liepert estimated that there was globally a reduction of about 4% in solar radiation reaching the ground between 1961 and 1990. While more recent indications are that the trend may have reversed in the last decade, it could still be significant. Assuming for the sake of argument that these data are valid, what could have caused this? A change of that magnitude in the incoming solar radiation itself is not possible since satellite observations would have seen it. Thus, it must be something that is happening in the atmosphere to intercept solar radiation. There are only a few possibilities: clouds, water vapour or aerosols.

• First of all it is important to note that even pure greenhouse gas forcing will lead to a slight decrease in surface solar radiation (due to the concurrent increased humidity) and potential cloud feedbacks. Cloud cover and thickness are both like to vary as a function of climate change.

• Contrails (those wispy trails left behind high flying jets) have increased over the period and may be important. But estimates of their global effect, even making very generous assumptions about their spread are small (Minnis et al, 2004). Aerosols are also known to have increased over this time, and so they are a natural candidate. However, simulations using the relatively straightforward ‘direct effect’ of aerosols (the increase in albedo of the planet due to the particle brightness) do not match the inferred changes. The final candidates are numerous interactions of aerosols with clouds, the so-called ‘indirect effects’.

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Our earth is in trouble, and we’ve got to save it! Encouraging the adoption of alternative energies or energy conservation in every home and office and throughout industry … Everywhere.

• 1) Cut flowers are pretty and smell good, but are ultimately disposable after just a few days. The next time you’re in the market for some, go for a potted version instead. They last longer, improve indoor air quality and can even be self-watering. If cut flowers are a must, go for organic and look for the Veliflora sustainable floral label.

• 2) A low-flow showerhead can save you gallons of water each time you use it. We’ve seen ‘em as low as a half-gallon per minute, and for as little as $12 US. We’ve arrived at the final installment of our quick-n-easy actions to take for a better planet. At just 25 items, we know there are a plethora of other easy ways to take action, and just because they’re not on the list doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do them. The little things can make a difference!

• 3) Instead of buying bottled water, use a water filter instead. There are some pretty strange options for filtration out there, but they can be very simple and easy to use, so get one, use it to replenish your precious bodily fluids, and you’ll never buy bottled water again.

• 4) To go the extra mile, get a rainwater storage tank; you don’t even have to dig a huge hole in the yard to have one (we got all the facts at a rainwater harvesting conference). You won’t be able to drink it (unless you do what this guy did, and bottle it), but your flowers, plants and garden will sure enjoy it. This will save the potable water your utility provides just for household use, and you’ll use less of it.

• 5) Use “Tupperware”-style reusable food containers for leftovers and lunches; you’ll save miles of plastic wrap and tons of plastic bags. While you’re at it, get reusable versions of other stuff, like grocery bags, gift bags and (why not?) muffin cups.

• 6) Draft excluders at the base of your doors can save vast amounts of cold from getting in and heat from getting out. Your wallet will thank you, and you can do it with other doors around the house, like your fridge door, too.

• 7) A programmable thermostat will help efficiently regulate your indoor climate; it’s like TiVo for your house. Warm it up and cool it down only when you want to, live more comfortably and cheaply. Isn’t that what we all want?

• Ride a bicycle. The most efficient form of transportation ever devised was named the most significant innovation in a UK survey; in 2005, more bikes than cars were sold in the US, and it’s certainly one of our favorites, from a myriad of killer folding bikes to bamboo bikes to bikes with an electric boost.We don’t know how you can’t love something that will alternately charge your iPod or make you a daiquiri.

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