You’ll often find parents going about it the wrong way when it comes to educating their toddlers about eco-friendly habits, or worse, not educating them at all. They’ll spur images of a ravaged future Earth with filthy oceans and decimated species. While that can sometimes be good enough a method, nevertheless, educating young minds about sustainable practices first and foremost requires setting an example. When your kids witness you limiting your quantity of waste, breaking free from plastic, and recycling, they’ll be encouraged to follow in your footsteps.
Let’s go over how you can help instill a sense of responsibility in future generations.
Adopt a Zero-Waste Lifestyle
Humanity has never produced so much over the course of its history; food, clothes, cars, household appliances, you name it. Even though they’re all convenient for our modern lifestyle, this has generated huge and uncontrollable amounts of waste. Now, if you want your children to grow up as environmentally-conscious individuals, teaching them the right practices for eliminating waste early on should be your goal. With a little research, you can get acquainted with how to achieve, let’s say, a zero-waste wardrobe, or an eco-friendly kitchen. Invariably, you’ll find that there are viable alternatives that can help limit your environmental impact considerably.
Respect the Outdoors
It goes without saying that respect for the outdoors, in the city or the countryside, should be second nature. Aside from the foulness of littering and other uncivil practices, take the whole family on a trip to discover the wonders of Mother Nature; at the beach, on the mountainside, in a national park. This could be an opportunity to familiarize your toddlers with geography, topography, flora, fauna, and more.
Conserve Energy
One of the best ways to help your young ones go green is by encouraging them to save energy at home. Since current energy production methods are rather limited and often polluting, using resources optimally will help them down the road. This could be achieved through simple and easily implemented acts, such as turning off unused lights, switching off the TV while nobody’s watching, not letting water taps flow pointlessly, and so on.
Reuse
The habit of reusing old items is not only good for the planet, but also for your children’s creativity and resourcefulness. Instead of mindlessly tossing things in the garbage, they’ll look for fun ways to repurpose them, which can be a great eco-friendly activity. For instance, toilet paper rolls, popsicles sticks, or old newspapers can be used to make wonderful and playful creations.
Recycle and Compost
Recycling is not merely a trend anymore. In fact, in some places, it’s become mandatory (Connecticut, Seattle). The concept is quite straightforward; you set up a garbage container for each kind of household waste, such as plastic, glass, or paper. Practicing this as a family should help sensitize your children on the importance of separating waste, if any, in order to facilitate the garbage treatment process that comes afterwards. For food wastes, you can set up a compost bin or jars to serve as fertile soil for gardening.
Ditch Plastic
We’ve never produced and used so much plastic. Despite its advantages of being transparent and cheap (great for business), plastic items such as bottles, cups, bags, and other containers can take hundreds of years to biodegrade. That’s not great for the environment, especially when they’re not recycled and left out in landfills or oceans. In that optic, a good initiative would be to inventory all the plastic items you use and replace them with reusable and durable alternatives, such as stainless steel water bottles, fabric bags for groceries, or metal lunch boxes and bamboo utensils.
Shop Responsibly
Sustainable practices inevitably entail smart and responsible shopping habits. Educate your toddlers on why it’s essential to consuming local, seasonal, and organic products; not simply because it’s
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