Mom Goes Green

I know this for a fact, because this weekend, our kids reminded us!

Saturday morning was spent sleeping-in (far too late), but after we got moving, we really GOT MOVING!  After long discussions about how we should spend the day, we decided to make the best of an unseasonable warm Ohio day (68 degrees!) and simply get outdoors.

We went to our daughter’s school and ran around looking at all of the amazing wonders in her school’s Land Lab. This area in front of her school has a pond, decks, walking paths and large planter boxes that the families can adopt.  We cultivated our box and planted some bulbs (and will eagerly await their Spring arrival) and added a little metal sign that said “GROW”! (…somewhat of a double entendre for growing some of nature’s gifts as well as growing little minds!)

We came home and planted more bulbs in our own yard, raked leaves, the kids ran around playing every sport imaginable and jumped in (and sometimes destroyed) our perfectly raked piles.  Fortunately, living on a ravine, our leaves are simply raked down the hill so they can decompose and be recycled by nature.

The kids spent a half hour cracking open acorns to “make hors d’oeuvres” for the squirrels!  We even made ourselves S’mores over an outdoor fire and continued to run around and play, and enjoy the day long after darkness fell.  Everyone was in a fabulous mood.  And I don’t doubt for a second that it had everything to do with simply being outside and enjoying breathing the fresh air.

I sometimes forget that a great day with my family doesn’t need to include museums or amusement parks, trips or expensive events or vacations.  Everything we need is outside our own backdoor or a short, local drive away… all found in nature, most often for free.

Kids today spend twice as much time indoors as we did (a very sad fact), so if you need ideas, reasons or simply more encouragement, check out NWFs “Be Out There” program and you’re sure to find something that clicks!

At the end of the night our daughter could hardly relax as she settled into bed.  She talked about how excited she was to see our flowers grow and proclaimed the day as “the best day ever”!

Thanks for the reminder, my little sweet pea!

A few months ago, I wrote a post about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch… the sickening, swirling area of approximately seven million tons of plastic debris and waste floating in the Pacific that is roughly twice the size of Texas (and some say, twice the size of the entire US).

It swirls through the ocean between the continental US and Japan, and contains everything from plastic bags to Legos to footballs.  One fifth is believed to come from trash dumped from ships and oil rigs, and the rest comes from land and all of the plastics we discard on a daily basis.

I certainly got my fair share of comments and emails.  Some readers were appalled (just like I am), while others were skeptical. One particularly fine gent emailed me and wanted to know why there weren’t pictures of this “plastic island” that everyone keeps raging about and why I’m making false statements.

Well, I first think he’s taking terms a bit too literal!  It’s not an actual island where you can dock your yacht, Mr. Crabby Pants!  This garbage patch is an AREA, where the vortex of ocean currents collects all of our discarded trash.   It’s that simple.  The ocean eventually breaks down the plastics into little bits and tiny pieces of plastic that marine life mistakes for plankton (their primary food source). It floats on both the surface to 100 feet below the surface… so NO!  No “island”, but we shouldn’t falsely believe that this is not an issue.

Now, a new expedition to study the Garbage Patch, led by a group of University of California scientists, states that they found much more debris than they expected and are concerned that the “patch” may be much larger than originally thought.

It’s hard to imagine what we can do to prevent this… even experts don’t have the answers.  The only hope is to decrease our dependency on so many plastics, improve our recycling practices and simply change our overall behavior… and clean the mess that already exists.  We must find ways to decrease the plastic trash that reaches the oceans and waterways… period.

The most disturbing part?  There is said to be another patch in the southern hemisphere… and it’s four times larger.

Yes, summer is dwindling… and as I spend small portions of days preparing to send our kids back to school I keep running across reminders of the vacation that was not so long ago, but seems so long ago.

The drive took us through breathtaking views of West Virginia mountains where we were awed by trees as far as the eye could see.  It was amazing to see so many undisturbed miles without areas cleared away for development.  My views on chopping down trees are no mystery.   Can you just imagine how invigorating the air in the middle of those mountains must be?

I think about our kids running wild over the Jockey’s Ridge sand dunes, the largest active dune system in the Eastern US.  What a difference to those treed mountains… conditions on the dunes are so harsh, vegetation can only grow on the outskirts.  But the sunset… ah, the sunset.   The silhouettes in this photo are actually our precious kids, standing where the top of the dunes (that are believed to have been formed millions of years ago) seem to meet the sky.

And what beach vacation doesn’t include lots of ocean time.  Just the sound relaxes me.  I could watch the waves for hours on end and I get wrapped up in how vast and amazing the ocean is.  The irony is that one of our favorite adventures was trying to find sea glass washed up on the shore.  This sea glass is actually glass that has found its way into the ocean and gets tumbled and smoothed by the water, sand and salt.  Every time we found one it was like finding a real gem and then I start to wonder what it came from, where it originated, who touched it before us and even how it wound up in the ocean.  Yes, ironic that Mom Goes Green and family found treasures in something that started as ocean litter!

The point of all of this is simply that experiencing the mountains, the sprawling dunes and the incredible ocean reminds me of another quote by Divamish Indian Chief Seattle:

“Take only memories, leave nothing but footprints.”

… tread lightly in our daily lives, because this planet is truly amazing!

Over the past weeks, we’ve had a raccoon hid her babies in our yard, snakes take up residence in a bush outside our front door and two birds nest under a different bush.  A raccoon even stopped by in our open garage while I was quietly doing something one evening. (That event caused me to let out a “startled scream” that sent mama running!)

All this in a suburban neighborhood, close enough to urban life that we can see downtown Cleveland from our backyard.

I truly wondered “what gives!” until my husband pointed out that we have the most natural place in the neighborhood… no chemicals, no fertilizers or pesticides, no unfriendly environments… and I think he’s right.

When my neighbor saw the snakes, she suggested we pay for an exterminator or snake wrangler to get them out of here.  (Seriously?  I should pay someone to evict these poor little harmless creatures?!  But she is the same person {although she is a nice lady} that chopped down all of her backyard trees last year.) Then there is the other neighbor (also a “tree chopper“) that called out his OWN tree service to look at removing a tree in OUR yard because he didn’t like the leaves it was dropping in his driveway!  He offered to pay half, which we politely declined.

Maybe animals really do have a sense of “someplace safe”… yea, MomGoesGreen’s yard, of course!  And our kids are loving the animal park in their own yard (but yes, I do understand the dangers of raccoons, so they have been educated on safety.)

If you believe in karma, I think you’ll agree that my husband is right.  There IS a natural attraction because we do let off all whole lot of “good nature karma!”

At the start of every summer, as the temperature rises, my husband and I seem to have the same discussion… when to turn on the air conditioning!

This is never an easy discussion (okay! read: argument!) as this is the man who wears shorts and t-shirts around the house when it is 19 degrees outside in the dead of winter.

I prefer the open windows and doors, and want to breathe the fresh air.  To this my husband responds “Babe, it ceases to be fresh as soon as it’s 86 degrees with 70% humidity!”  Well, it’s still fresh but I guess it does cease to be RE-freshing!

Just like heating your house in the winter and whether you do or don’t choose to crank the AC, there are ways to keep your house cooler, stop some of the cool air loss and use less energy in the process:

• Close blinds or curtains in various windows throughout the day to prevent the sun shining in.  If it’s coming in, so is the heat.
• Use ceiling fans. They circulate the cool air and don’t use a lot of energy.
• Program your thermostat.  No need to keep it blasting in the evening or when you aren’t even home.
• When it’s cool outside at night, shut off the air, open the windows and take advantage.
• 74 degrees is all you need.  This is a bearable temperature, and if you can tolerate it higher, do it!  Each degree saves 3-4% on your cooling expenses.
• Don’t worry about unused rooms.  Close the windows, doors and vents in these rooms, and block the bottom of the door if they aren’t frequently occupied.
• Run appliances at night.  This includes dryers & dish washers that give off heat. Avoid using your oven… give it a rest and grill instead!  And if you do use the stovetop, be sure to use the exhaust fan to take away the heat.
• Turn off unneeded lights, TVs, computers, etc. when you aren’t using them.  They all generate heat too.
• Keep heat generating appliances away from the thermostat (TVs, lamps, etc.).  They’ll make the thermostat think it’s hotter than it really is.
• Don’t chop down trees that shade your house.  They simply keep a house cooler.  And even plant strategically.  Shaded AC units run more efficiently, but just be sure not to block the airflow.

I do try to take my own advice.  It’s not always easy (living with my husband who compensates by turning up the ceiling fans to “jet speed”) but it’s a compromise we always seem to manage when it all “boils down”!

I’ve always been a city girl at heart, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate nature.  In fact, I may even appreciate it more as I see the direct effect of suburban development near my home (and the herds of deer that have taken up residence in the ravine behind my house and spent one night devouring all of my landscaping!)

And while I’m not one to ‘rough it’ either, I realize that getting back to nature doesn’t mean you have to spend a small fortune at the outdoor store and drive for hours to set-up camp in some remote region of the country.  Your own backyard can be the ideal campsite.

This Saturday (June 27), in fact, is the Great American Backyard Campout.

Conceived by the National Wildlife Federation, this is a day they have created to invite families to reconnect with nature and the outdoors, and remind us that we can manage life “with a little less”.  You can set up tents, cookout over a fire pit, explore your surroundings, play flashlight tag, star gaze and our kids’ ever-favorite… gorge on S’mores!  Shut down all the lights, computers and TVs in your house and even save a little electricity while you’re at it. (Indoor latrine, via flashlight, permitted of course!)

If you want to find out who’s camping nearby, or register your own outing, check out NWFs site for more information.

I think this is a great opportunity to join families all over the country in embracing everything the great outdoors has to offer.  Now the only fear I have is waking up to find Bambi staring me in the face!

First of all, this has absolutely nothing to do with “Purple Rain”(!), but everything to do with saving cherished tropical rainforests!

The Prince’s Rainforests Project (as in Charles, Prince of Wales) was started in 2007, but is being given a big push by the release of this new PSA. If it takes royalty and celebrities to get a cause noticed, I don’t care… I’m all for it, as long as the cause DOES get noticed and positive steps are made.  I think this will appeal to kids too… take a look.

The mission of this project is to create public awareness, work with governments, businesses and non-profit organizations to find a solution for deforestation, and find sources for funding.  This global effort is aimed at getting top level support from nations around the world.

Saving these tropical rainforests is so critical because they absorb about a fifth of all man-made CO2 emissions, and we all know how CO2 affects climate change.  In fact, these forests are often burned down, which releases all of the CO2 they have stored back into the atmosphere, as if they had never existed.  And this doesn’t even consider the fate of the animals that call these forests home.

So check out The Prince’s Rainforests Project, sign-up to have your voice heard, find new ways to help and spread the word.  Stand up and say you want this preventable disaster to stop.

And when you take a look at The Prince’s Rainforests Project site, be sure to watch the counter at the top of the page.  In the time I spent reading one page on the site… 445,129 square meters of rainforest were destroyed.  How horribly sad.

It’s April 22… the 39th celebration of Earth Day!  While I am rarely at a loss for words, today I’m going to say less than normal.  I think Earth Day speaks for itself.

I am reminded, however, that this misuse of the planet has been going on for a long time… is anyone old enough to remember the 70’s commercial with the “Crying Indian?” I remember being very little and seeing this on TV… and feeling a sadness every time I saw the Indian cry.  It may be 30+ years old, but it still gets to me.

Today, we have the Blue Man Group to remind us that, while the vehicle for the message is modernized, the message has not changed.

So, I’ll leave you with two more thoughts:

“The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know. Humankind has not woven the web of life.  We are but one thread within it.  Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.  All things are bound together.  All things connect.” ~ Chief Seattle, Divamish Indian, 1855

“The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all, our most pleasing responsibility.  To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.” ~ Wendell Berry

Happy Earth Day… celebrate!

If you do a Google search for “Earth Day” you’re likely to find hundreds upon hundreds of suggestions about how to spend April 22, and am I going to do that too?  Yea, I am.  But first things first…

Earth Day is a birthday so to speak – a day to celebrate the earth.  It was created in 1970 as a way to remind us to appreciate nature and learn how to protect our environment.  And while it is celebrated in the spring in the northern hemisphere, it is actually observed in the autumn in the southern hemisphere (both days being the exact “middle point” of the season).  Internationally, it reaches over 17,000 organizations in 174 countries, so this (like the newer Earth Hour project) is a worldwide event.

No matter what you do to celebrate the day, it can be truly significant.  If you simply take notice of the earth and how lucky we truly are, you have celebrated!  So here are some simple ideas, if you don’t have some terrific ones of your own!

• See “Earth” – the Disneynature film that is sure to be a crowd pleaser!
• Plant a tree – buy a tree for your yard or sponsor the planting of a tree.
• Plan an eco-friendly meal – eat organic, locally-grown produce and get a taste of the earth!
• Attend an Earth event – check your local zoo, botanical gardens, nature center or community’s programs.
• Read a book – if your children are burnt out on their own nature books, check out the local library for some new selections.
• Clean out the clutter – and donate what you own that no longer has a purpose, to keep it out of the trash and landfills.
• Go for a walk – your own neighborhood or a local hiking path can remind you of the wonder of nature.
• Pick up some trash – this can be coupled with your walk and accomplish even more!
• Break ground for a garden – as organic as you can get!
• Adopt nature – sponsor an endangered species or an acre of rainforest.
• Make recycled crafts – your own home (and recycle bin) is full of supplies!
• Change a habit – whether it’s cleaning products or a pledge to recycled more, every change is a good change.
• Switch to CFLs – buy some!  And when an old incandescent burns out, switch ‘em out!
• USE those reusable bags – vow to make this a priority!
• “Talk about it!” – talk about what Earth Day really means… with your kids, your friends, your neighbor… anyone that might need to know or need a little “push!”

There are still a few days to make your plans, but just be sure to plan something.  But I truly believe that teaching our kids to respect the earth and appreciate this amazing planet is the best way to celebrate… kids that are taught to be “environmentally aware” grow up to be environmentally aware adults!

And remember… April 22 isn’t the only Earth Day… EVERY day should be Earth Day!

(This giveaway is now closed for entries… congratulations “Marisa”!)

Last year was the first time we really participated in Earth Day.  We planted a small tree in our yard (that shortly thereafter became a deer’s lunch… but at least we tried!), read some books about the Earth and had an eco-friendly dinner complete with some dirt for dessert (don’t call the authorities – it was just the dessert that LOOKS like dirt!)

This year I was so excited to learn that Disneynature is premiering its first film, Earth, on Earth Day, April 22, 2009.  The trailer looks just incredible.  Narrated by James Earl Jones, this film tells the remarkable story of three animal families and their amazing journey across the planet we all call home.  Earth combines rare action, unimaginable scale and impossible locations by capturing the most intimate moments of our planet’s wildest and most elusive creatures.  In fact, it’s directed by the same creative team behind the Planet Earth series (that we love!).

To make this an even more impactful event, Disneynature will also plant a tree in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest (the most endangered rain forest in the world), in honor of every moviegoer who sees the film in its opening week.  If a weekday viewing isn’t possible, you can plan for the weekend too, and still make a difference!

To top off this great effort, Disneynature has also offered a giveaway to a Mom Goes Green reader.  This Earth-branded package (valued at $60) includes a canvas tote, a biodegradable tumbler, a fleece blanket and a tree seedling (that hopes NOT to become a lunch!).  To enter this contest, just leave a comment and tell me how you will spend Earth Day this year. You can also send a Twitter message that includes a reply to @momgoesgreen and a link to this blog or write about this giveaway and link back.

A random winner will be selected one week from today’s post (US residents only, please… sorry!)

So plan your Earth Day activities, schedule a viewing of Earth and enter to win… all in celebration of this great planet we share!