Mary Isakson
Kitchen worms may sound like the latest urban plague; perhaps even the basis for a horror movie. Actually, it's just that the composting movement has come indoors.
These days it's easy to find inexpensive home composting kits with a plastic bin, a supply of worms, and simple instructions for providing a friendly home for those worms. In exchange for your effort, you are rewarded with composting service, provided by reliable workers (the worms!). The process is exciting for young children to participate in; it provides a tangible education in the natural world and a practical benefit in the form of compost for your houseplants, window boxes, or garden. (In New York City, the Lower East Side Ecology center offers workshops to get you started.)
Perhaps you are not quite open (yet?) to welcoming a pound of red wigglers into your home. There are other ways to benefit from composting:
Some community gardens and recycling centers accept contributions of household scraps; some organizations sell local compost -- find out if such organizations exist in your area. In New York City where I live, for example, there's a map of local composting services, available at GreenApplemap.org. To see if similar resources exist in your area, check out GreenMap.org, the website of Green Map System. Green Map is an international organization promoting development of local maps illustrating environmentally sustainable services; they provide an exciting opportunity for individuals or groups (families or schools included!) to promote a green theme of their choice in their local community.
Elizabeth Rogers, co-writer of The Green Book, The Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet, One Simple Step at a Time
Last week, to celebrate my 42nd birthday, I did the "green mom, back-to-basics, connect-with-nature, be-at-peace-with-my-laugh-lines" trek to beautiful Joshua Tree, with three of my girlfriends and their kids.
The thing about Joshua Tree on the cusp of summer is that it is close to 100 degrees. But I was prepared for the heat -- and prepared to keep my birthday group prepared (and hydrated) -- with reusable water bottles for each one. No piles of sparkletts minis were going to fill our rooms -- there was just no way I was going to make needless waste on the day of my birth.
The first day was a scorcher -- climbing at 7:30 am, the mercury moved past 82. We were well armed: hats, sunscreen and of course our trusty water bottles. But then my son started complaining that his bottle was leaking -- which in fact it was -- leaving him atop a rock panting from thirst.
Here was the problem: we had two days left and we were down a water bottle. To most people, this would be an easily solved dilemma: go buy a few packaged water bottles from the canteen and call it a day. But for me, well aware that we Americans throw away 60 million plastic water bottles per day, I had a hard time doing this. A really hard time. But I had to get over it -- and for that weekend, I shamelessly contributed to this shocking number, knowing full well that you can't stop drinking water in the desert.
The next plastic challenge during my birthday weekend came when one of my girlfriends presented the kids with gleaming new, PLASTIC, battery-operated water guns...
Wendy Gordon, General Manager, National Geographic's TheGreenGuide.com
A new friend (whose wife just had a baby) was recently telling me about all the things they were doing to keep environmental contaminants out of their home. He asked me if I knew which houseplants were most effective at reducing indoor air pollutants. I didn't know the answer off-hand but was curious to find out.
I came upon a wonderful book by Dr. B.C. Wolverton, How to Grow Fresh Air. What I learned is, while plants can't cure major indoor pollution problems on their own, as noted in a recent Tip of the Week, they are an ideal antidote to the minor contamination introduced into our indoor environments through everyday household products and building materials.
Plants produce oxygen, add precious moisture and remove toxins from the air through the tiny openings in their leaves. In fact, as few as 15 houseplants in an average-size home can offer a significant reduction in the number of indoor contaminants.
This is not just folklore. In the 70s, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, faced with the task of creating a life-support system for planned moon bases, began extensive studies on a fundamental question -- just how does the earth produce and sustain clean air? The answer of course is through the living processes of plants. Now, 30-plus years later, we know a great deal about the cleansing power of house plants. And powerful they are. Just consider the indoor air quality problems many commonly available and beautiful houseplants can help to remedy:
Formaldehyde: The Boston fern (Nephrolepi exalta "Bostoniensis"), Florist's mums (Chrysanthemum morifolium), the Gerbera daisy (Gerbera jamesonii) and the Dwarf date palm (Phoenix roebelenii) are all highly effective at reducing indoor levels of formaldehyde, a contaminant present in many household items (including particleboard, carpet backings, some grocery bags, facial tissues, paper towels and permanent-press clothing) and released by gas stoves.
Toluene/Xylene: Add an Areca palm (Chrysalidocarpus lutescens), the Moth orchid (Phalenopsis) and the Dwarf date palm to your indoor greenery, all of which are effective at removing xylene and toluene, harmful volatile organic chemicals which can be emitted from gasoline, adhesives, ceiling tiles, computer screens, paints, inks used in photocopiers, stains and varnishes, and upholstery among other common household products and materials.
And it's not just our material things. Our breath contains bioeffluents -- such as ethyl alcohol, acetone, methyl alcohol and ethyl acetate -- that also contribute to poor indoor air quality, particularly in a crowded classroom. The beautiful peace lily is remarkably effective at addressing these problems.
Other hardworking and beautiful indoor plants include bamboo palm (Chamaedorea), Chinese evergreen (Aglaonema), English Ivy (Hedera helix), the indoor dracaenas (Dracaena "Janet Craig," D. marginata, D. massangeana and D. warnekii), and the snake plant or mother-in-law's tongue (Sansevieria trifasciata laurentii).
When choosing houseplants, remember that many (including some of those above) can be toxic if ingested, so be extra careful if you have young children or pets in your home. Staff at the local garden center should be able to advise you on nontoxic choices; contact your local poison-control center for guidance (the phone number is listed in the front of your telephone book).
For a beautiful and authoritative reference to the cleansing power of particular houseplants, order How to Grow Fresh Air (Penguin Books, 1996, $18) from our online book store. And get more tips and advice on how to reduce or eliminate indoor air pollutants in your home at thegreen.guide.com.
Kimberly Danek Pinkson, Founder of the EcoMom Alliance
While you're enjoying the last days of summer, the new school year looms ahead and the pressure to purchase adds to what is often an already a stressful time for many kids and parents. It can also be an opportunity to start fresh. So while you and your littles head off to shop, keep in mind the life cycle of your purchases: their manufacturing may have dumped toxic pesticides and other chemicals into the environment and into the bodies of exploited workers and their families.
Good news is that there are lots of eco-friendly options that can make back to school all the way cool (well, other than the fact that you still have to get everyone up and out every morning!).
Lunchbox options: PVC, or polyvinyl chloride (a.k.a vinyl), can be found in most shoes, boots, lunch boxes and backpacks. It is known to lodge in the fatty tissue of animals and humans and can cause health problems such as cancer, organ damage and immune suppression. It is one of the most persistent and toxic of all man made chemicals. So opt for old-fashioned stainless steel lunch boxes instead. I just found a great Curious George one for my nephew. I also like Mimi the Sardine Lunch Bags, and the faux-plastic Laptop Lunches bento style boxes -- which are actually made of corn starch.
Choose brown, wax-paper bags instead of plastic baggies to avoid adding to our landfills and leaching phthalates into your child's food. Earthpak.com has great recycled rubber back packs. Sigg.com and KleanKanteen.com offer healthy water bottle alternatives to the over 3 million plastic bottles that end up in landfills every day in the United States.
Buy organic cotton clothing. Cotton production accounts for a large percentage of the pesticide contamination of our waterways and food chain. Target has started carrying some organic options, and Patagonia and Garden Kids Clothing are other great options.
Buy recycled paper, biodegradable pens and binders at Green Earth Office Supply or EcoProducts.com.
You've now saved fossil fuels, your child's health and your own guilt. How to teach Johnny that enough is enough... well, that's another story.
My youngest was considering what he wanted to do the summer between his junior and senior years in high school. He’d thought he’d stay home, get a job and play lacrosse, in the hopes that this might put him in a position to be recruited for a college team. It seemed he was all set, but then he and a couple of friends started thinking about something altogether different: traveling far from home and volunteering.
Their imaginations took them to the farthest points on the planet, and involved some fairly outlandish job ideas, so with a bit of gentle steering from mom, they began to explore what their real options might be. My husband and I were ok with their traveling to a far away country as long as it was a relatively stable one (they were only 17), and as long as the organization they worked for was legitimate.
My son and his friends studied volunteer programs in Asia, Africa and the Americas, primarily through internet searches and word of mouth. At the same time, we asked a lot of friends with older kids and also a number of teachers about programs they’d researched and what they knew about them. The kids then contacted the ones they were most interested in. They settled on an agency that ran an orphanage in Llasa, Tibet and were in need of teachers.
The program they chose was geared for college kids and adults, so it did little to coddle the volunteers -- or his anxious parents. There were no pretty brochures or thick packets of forms sent to us to prepare them for the trip, just what the organization provided on their web site.
