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Tiny green hands
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Eco-friendly ways for children to care for the planet
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Photo: K. RAMESH BABU
EVER-GREEN GESTURE Children love the outdoor edition
Are your children eco-friendly? Sure, they get big bites of “green” education in school. A lot of it from textbooks, stuffed down their unwilling throats while they sit in the classroom – in grey, not green surroundings.
Children love the earth, the outdoor edition. Haven’t you stopped them from eating mud, picking flowers, jumping into puddles? Who catches fireflies, picks up spiders and chases ladybugs? And ha, who cuddles a dog when it is hurt, and kisses it in the muzzle? Kids love Nature, before it is killed by textbooks and exams; experiments and projects. It’s easy to convert loving green to living green. Want to try these?
Buy half a dozen flowerpots. Help the child fill them with mud. You know the drill, right? A layer of small stones, mud mixed with organic compost loose enough to dig in, space at the top for the water to stay put. Planting is child’s play. When you buy pudina (mint), gather the thicker stalks. Get the child to stick them standing slanted. Gift him with a small water can (a coffee filter is thrilling and cheap) and begin a watering routine. In other pots, plant soaked whole moong, methi, mustard - look into the kitchen dubbas. Watch the child’s face with camera in hand when he sees the first sprouts. Make gardening, all right, balcony gardening, a family activity.
Use one of the larger pots for homemade compost. The wet garbage in the kitchen — veg and fruit peels — metamorphose into organic manure.
Take your children to fruit-and-veggie shops, preferably the open ones – AC-ed ones aren’t “green”. Talk to them about where they grow. Above or below the ground? Root or fruit? Organic or chemically grown? Naturally ripened or coloured by gases? Seasonal or cold storaged? Summer or winter? From plains or mountains? If children believe milk is produced in factories, whose fault is that?
Carry a couple of cloth bags when you go shopping. Get strong ones stitched. Make one for the child to carry. Ask him to paint a theme on it – “I go green!” with a sun and some flowers. Make cloth-bags a must for shopping/library expeditions and school with extra stuff. The child puts some of the buys in the bag and squeals proudly at the check-in: “Can you put these in my cloth bag, please?” No plastic carry bags means less trash.
Shop around (cloth-bag, please!) for recycled school supplies. Tell the child recycled paper produces less pollution, uses less energy and water. Are there re-cycled pencils, pens and notebooks? At the end of every school year, mom made us pull off pages from the used school notebooks and helped us stitch into “rough” books. This is one holiday project we never made a face at. These were our journals, our personal diaries (you read them, mom!), our math practice books. Teach the children to take care of writing tools, rather than stock boxes of them. Hey, that’s cash saved! Get Woody pens (safe for pen chewers) and Corn pens, which are bio-degradable, when you go abroad.
Go on eco-holidays. As you trek, hike or walk, tell the children why the areas are precious. Between huffs, talk of endangered animals and birds (ok, learn first!), ask why waters have to be kept clean, tell what climate change is all about. When you picnic, make it their job to clean up when you leave. No littering!
Choose nature books for bedtime reading. Tulika, Tara Publishing (“Leaf Life”, “Tiger on a Tree”, “Catch that Crocodile”) and CBT have a number of storybooks on environment. Read to them the evergreen “The Lorax” by Dr. Seuss. This classic has been made into a movie – the video clipping is on the Internet. Or “The Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein.
Go digital to take pictures. A digital image uses fewer chemicals.
If you’ve switched to disposable diapers for the baby, absorb this. It’s convenient for you but not for the planet. Millions of disposable diapers now choke landfills all over the world. Cloth diapers need a lot of water, so try flushable ones. Best would be to toilet train kids early. If a child is able to sit up, climb stairs and walk, he can figure this out as well. How did our parents manage? Children do learn. Five-year-old Karuna came home from school and said, “Mom, a parrot in the school cage died today. There is one more. Won’t it feel lonely? Will you tell the teacher to let it go?”
GEETA PADMANABHAN
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