For the first time on Green Mamma, we meet a green family of five who work hard at being eco-friendly to Mother Earth. Sara, the family’s green mamma, says that the media’s ongoing attention to green living has influenced her and her family to make choices that benefit the environment. Staples of the family’s green lifestyle include recycling, buying less, repurposing, and using reusable grocery bags.
With a large family and lots of friends, Sara, her husband Eli, their two pre-schoolers Avery and Zach and newborn baby Leah are doing their part for planet Earth. Here are just a few ways they live green:
1. How does your garden grow? To create a connection between their family and nature, Eli and the boys started a small vegetable garden to tend together. Growing a garden helps children identify real food sources and can help them understand that vegetables come from the dirt and fruits grow on trees. Additionally, the family participates in a Community Support Agriculture, or CSA that not only will supply fresh produce but also supports local small farms. To read more about CSAs, click here, or to read about Abbie, another green friend who is part of a historic farming family in Connecticut, click here.
2. Celebrate in a green way. Being green for all occasions is a challenge, and when Sara and her family have parties to attend, buying eco-friendly products is one way in which they exercise their environmental values. Sara purchases earth friendly gifts for the many birthday parties they attend, especially toys that are durable, like wooden blocks. To learn more about green and organic gifts, click here.
3. Remember your library card. When this large family is not busy with friends and parties, they like to read. Each week, the family visits the library and checks out enough books to allow each child a variety of stories to last them through the week. Having a library card not only saves the family money but it saves valuable space inside their home, not to mention paper that might otherwise be consumed for purchased books. Sara says, “My kids love picking out books because there are so many to choose from.”
4. Repurpose and recycle food containers. A big family means many trips to the grocery store, and you guessed it, lots of empty food containers at the end of a week. One way Sara offsets food packaging’s plastic consumption is to save containers from food and to reuse them for crafts or for play. Once a container has been well used, it does end up in the recycling bin, but as Sara points out, “At least it took longer [for it] to get there.”
5. Rescue abandoned toys. Sara’s family commits to the toys and products they choose to purchase. When the time comes for the family to part with an old toy, they donate and refrain from putting toys in the trash. By selecting toys and products with care and committing to using and keeping what we buy, green families can save themselves from overconsuming and wasting items that they don’t need or intend to use for the long run.
Sara, Eli, Avery, Zach, and Leah are on a green adventure; in the near future, they plan to start a compost, and Sara is in the works of making kid design cloth napkins. Hopefully we’ll have more about her napkin project soon. Also, to read more about composting, click here.
Thanks again to this incredibly earth friendly family! Planet Earth needs more green families like yours!
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
April 14th, 2008 at 11:50 am
If you continue to look deeper, you’ll find that larger families will tend to be lighter on the environment than you think. Many of the really large families I know are very concerned about their environment and work to reduce their impact in many ways.
We compost (vermi and standard), recycle and reuse. We grow our own food or try to buy locally. We use the library constantly. We try to reduce our trips into town. (though, we use less fuel per capita than a smaller family.) We buy many things at resale shops and garage sales. Our clothes are used by 3-4 children.
Most of this stuff, especially reusing, is just a natural part of a larger family. And most importantly, we teach these things and why we do it to our children.
April 19th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
all the more argument for having large families (our children learn to tend to the earth in a considerate way).
May 9th, 2008 at 3:43 am
I am not sure that I can completely understand your comments. Would you be so kind as to expand on your reasoning a little more before I comment.