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One thing Recycla has learned over the years is that while most people are fine with going green in theory, the reality can sometimes be different.  For example, she has spent years getting her husband to accept eco cleaning supplies — in theory, he understands that they are healthier to have around the house; however, in reality, he does not believe that they are as effective in dealing with dirt and grime. (Hogwash, says Recycla).

With all this in mind, Recycla was pleased to read this article with seven great suggestions for how to ease your loved ones/roommates into a greener lifestyle.  Quoting directly:

1. Make it simple. Sometimes getting someone to be green is about making it easy for them. Clearly marked recycling bins, cleaning products that smell nice and do the job, a Bokashi composter instead of a traditional one (you can just scrape all your leftover food into it after dinner, even meat and dairy!), tasty substitutes for their favorite snacks.
2. Be willing to do the work. If the people you live with aren’t being as green as you are, we’re sorry but you’re just going to have to do the extra work with a smile and no lectures.
3. Start slow/. Instead of trying to change everything at once, introduce one new thing every week.
4. Be observant, pick your battles, and then get creative: What are their non-green habits that bother you the most? If, for example, they leave the lights on, invest in some timers that turn off the lights automatically.
5. Negotiate and experiment: I have one friend whose boyfriend still labors under the misconception that green products don’t clean as well. When his allergies flared up, she suggested they try some green products, just to see. When he saw that his allergies were clearing up and that the products worked just as well as the ones he was used to, he relented.
6. Frame it so they can understand it: Another friend wanted to switch to CFLs but his wife balked because she thought they were ugly. When he pointed out that they’d save enough money over the life of the CFLs to get those shoes she’d been eyeing, she agreed. (If you want to find out how much money you’d save, click here).
7. Be patient: Eventually, they probably will come around, or at least be a little greener, but it may take some time.

How are things in your house?  Is everyone on board with getting a little more eco or are you having to work hard to convince some people?

Last week  and this week, the Eco Women have been talking about how to get your child geared up for school.  But what about fueling her young body?  What’s the best thing to feed him?

As any pediatrician will tell you, skipping breakfast is not an option if you want your child to be healthy.  All humans need food for fuel in the morning and growing children really need their nutrients to get their day started.  Foods that provide a good balance of protein, fruits, and healthy grains and not too much sugar or saturated fats are the way to go.  You also want to make sure your child starts the day well hydrated, so a glass of milk, juice, or a smoothie are important too.

Here in Recycla’s house, one daughter is a morning person who likes a big breakfast before school, while the other one would prefer to sleep in and then skip breakfast.  Because of that, one daughter will each something as simple as a  bowl of cereal with milk and banana slices and a glass of juice.  The other daughter might have whole wheat toast with a little butter and cinnamon, fruit salad (just fruit, not added sugar), and a yogurt smoothie.  Recycla’s husband makes great whole wheat pancakes and the girls often start the day with pancakes, fruit, and a tall glass of milk.  In the winter, one favorite breakfast is oatmeal (plain, not flavored) made with milk, a drizzle of maple syrup, and some raisins stirred in.

Sometimes breakfast is eaten on the run, and if that’s how things roll in your eco lair, take a look at this post written by Captain Compost, who offers some terrific ideas for healthy and organic convenience foods.

The foods that you buy your children are very important.  One thing that Recycla will not feed her children is conventional cereal.  The ingredients lists for those are filled with stuff she doesn’t want her family to eat, including genetically modified grains and high fructose corn syrup, not to mention the fact that so many of those cereals are high in sugar and low in nutritional value.  Instead, the family buys organic cereals that not only have better ingredients, but often also give part of their revenues to environmental non-profits.

Here are a couple of Recycla’s daughters’ favorites:

Hands down, Recycla’s children’s favorite organic cereals are made by EnviroKidz. With such flavors as Panda Puffs and Gorilla Munch, there are a variety of options to please every palate. Nutritionally, the cereals average 6-8 grams of sugar and 2 grams of protein per serving.

Instead of putting cheap plastic toys in each box of cereal, EnviroKidz makes the boxes themselves interesting. Each has photos of various animals and facts about them. There are puzzles and games to stimulate young minds too. Best of all, each box of EnviroKidz cereal tells kids what they can do to help the environment. Every year, EnviroKidz donates a portion of their profits to help environmental causes.

Recycla’s family also likes various cereals made by Kashi, including Autumn Wheat, which is her children’s favorite. As with the previously mentioned cereals, Kashi products are low in sugar, but some of them actually contain more protein. Autumn Wheat, for example, has 5 grams per serving.

When served with milk, some fruit, and a cup of juice, these cereals give Recycla’s children the energy they need to start the day ready to save the environment. They’re healthy, they’re organic, and they’re good for Planet Earth.

Tell the Eco Women:  What do you and your family like to eat for breakfast?

Images courtesy of the companies’ websites. The Eco Women are not employed by the companies mentioned here, nor were they paid to review these products. Darn.

Recycla has been a school parent for seven years and, in all that time, her children have never once bought lunch at their school. They don’t like the food and, frankly, Recycla understands completely.  Any time she has been at the girls’ schools for lunch, she has been horrified by the pre-packaged garbage being served to the students.

Therefore, the children pack their lunches EVERY DAY, which translates to nearly 2,000 packed lunches (and counting). Recycla has a LOT of experience packing lunches and has learned much over the years about how to be as environmentally friendly as possible in the process.

(The Waltons lunch box shown above is what Recycla carried when she was in elementary school.  Since she’s feeling a bit nostalgic, she decided to include a photo of it, just because.)

Let’s start at the beginning: the lunch box. Not all lunch boxes are created equal. For example, some soft vinyl lunch boxes contain dangerous levels of lead and far too many others contain polyvinyl chloride (PVC), including most of the ones sold at big box stores.  As the Green Mommy discussed yesterday, PVC is not a safe material.  Recycla concurs, so she hunted around for lunch boxes she could trust.

Luckily, there are a wide variety of safe lunch boxes out there.

Recycla’s daughters have lunch boxes from Lands’ End and L.L. Bean. Both companies’ offerings are PVC- and lead-free. Lands’ End now also has an eco-friendly lunch box that is made from 100% recycled materials. One of Recycla’s daughters has been using her Lands’ End lunch box for five years (and counting) and it looks as good as new. Recycla’s other daughter’s L.L. Bean lunch box has lasted for four years. These lunch boxes are a good deal and they clean easily.

There are loads of other great eco options out there:

• The Reuseit Insulated Lunchbag is large enough to hold even the hungriest student’s lunch.  It’s made in the USA from 100% recycled plastic. The material is PVC-free, lead-free, and can keep food cool until lunchtime, thanks to the nontoxic ice pack (included).
• Another option is this three-tier stainless steel lunch carrier at To-Go Ware.
• Of course, one of the easiest and safest options is the good old-fashioned lunch bag. Cloth — not paper. Recycla found dozens and dozens of cute cloth bags at Etsy.

Once you have chosen a lunch box (or bag or other container), the next question is: How do you wrap up the food that goes inside? Naturally, Recycla encourages you to go with reusable containers instead of plastic bags and aluminum foil.

Here are some great food storage options that Recycla has seen recently:

• Lunchskins pouches are moisture-proof and a great alternative to plastic baggies. They come in all different sizes and designs, so use them for sandwiches, veggies, crackers or any other lunch goodies. When you’re done, just toss them in the dishwasher.
• For sandwiches, you might try reusable sandwich wraps. You can make your own or you can easily find a wide variety at Etsy.
• For other foods, such as fruits and veggies, side dishes, etc., the best thing you can do is switch to reusable food containers.  Your options are plastic, metal, and glass, although many schools discourage the use of glass and Recycla is personally wary since it breaks so easily.  The most common option is small plastic containers; however, there are a lot of reasons not to use plastic.  Recycla uses a combination of plastic and metal and is phasing out the plastic as things break.  For metal, take a look at this, this, and this.
• If you want to make this whole process as easy as possible, check out these cute lunch kits at By Nature.

For utensils, Recycla’s children carry the real deal, not plastic.  If you’re worried that your child might accidentally throw away his fork, buy some inexpensive flatware from a thrift shop, so that you’re not out much money if something ends up in the trash. (Recycla usually finds it for around $0.25 per piece.)

For your child’s drink, juice boxes are — duh — wasteful, as are disposable water bottles and those wee cartons of milk.  Pack a reusable water bottle instead.  Sure it will cost you some money up front, but you’ll recover the dollars spent pretty quickly.

And have you considered swapping out disposable paper napkins for cloth ones?  Recycla’s family uses cloth napkins for most meals, but does have some eco paper napkins (made out of recycled paper) for occasional use and also for her daughters’ school lunches.  The girls always bring the paper napkins home and, if they’re too dirty to be used another time, they toss them in the compost bin.  This year, however, Recycla is going to try using cloth napkins in the girls’ lunches.  While she already has lots of cloth napkins that she has accumulated over the years, she’s thinking about cutting up some of her husband’s old shirts to make more.

As for the food that goes into the lunch boxes, Recycla encourages you to avoid buying foods that are packaged by the serving, such as grab-and-go bags of chips. It really doesn’t take much time to put foods into reusable containers and you’ll waste far fewer resources in the process. Recycla usually spends 5-10 minutes on Sunday evenings preparing containers for the week, so that all she has to do on school mornings is reach into the pantry for the necessary containers. Obviously, this doesn’t work as well for fresh foods, such as grapes or carrot sticks, but it’s great for other foods like raisins, popcorn, nuts, etc.  For fruits, veggies, and yogurt, Recycla’s girls fill the containers the night before and store them in the fridge until the next morning.

(By the way, you do know that so-called baby carrots are a waste of money and resources, right?)

A no-waste lunch box is the ultimate goal, but Recycla admits that it is not always feasible. Even she will resort to using plastic bags on occasion, such as when the girls go on field trips and their schools demand that the students bring lunches in disposable packaging.  (And this bothers one of Recycla’s daughters so much that she brings everything home so that it can at least be recycled.)

The important thing is to take that first step and eliminate just one single plastic bag or juice box every day. Once you do that, take the next step and make another change. And so on and so on.

Tell the Eco Women:  Do your kids buy their lunches at school or pack?

All images courtesy of their parent companies’ websites. The Eco Women are not employed by any of the companies mentioned, nor were they paid to review these products.

Eco Lassie has always been fascinated by the idea of Letterboxing, started in the 1800′s by a traveling salesman in the UK. It is said he hid his calling card in a jar and buried it in the English countryside. He left a note that whomever found it should add his own card.  Over time this has evolved to hikers planting boxes with self-addressed letters or postcards. Some add trinkets. The person who finds the box takes the object, mails the letter or card, and leaves one in its place.

Fast forward to the US in 2000 when a computer consultant named Dave Ulmer made the idea his own. He filled a container with software, money, a video, a book, a cassette recorder, and a can of black-eyed peas. He added in a slingshot handle and a logbook with the notation: GPS Stash #1.  Using the GPS coordinates of the spot, he hit it in the Oregon woods and noted those coordinates on his website.  He called it “The Great American GPS Stash Hunt.” The only rule was to take something and leave something.

Patricia Komar, in her article “The Hunt for Buried Treasure” for Natural Awakenings magazine, describes how the word evolved from stash to cache and how the sport had evolved. As the tenth anniversary of of Geocaching.com is celebrated, nearly two million Earth-friendly hunters, many with their dogs, will hike to one of over a million cache sites around the world.

New Jersey geocacher Jeff Smith takes his Scottish terrier mix along. “There’s a goal to the hike. . . my pooch loves it.”  He adds that having his dog along avoids attracting attention from non-geocachers and keeps them from being alerted to the buried treasure. “Bringing your dog is helpful; after all, you’re ‘just out walking your dog.’ “

Ec0 Lassie can picture the reaction of several breeds that like to sniff and dig, being taken on a hike, searching for a buried dog toy cache.   There are different categories of cache’s, from puzzles and mysteries to math and science.

Geocachers are usually into the environment, so most participate in CITO, or Cache In Trash Out, bringing along a trash bag and picking up any litter along their hike.  There are even coordinated worldwide cleanup events, which you can check into by logging into Geocaching.com/cito.

Eco Lassie thinks this is great way to get off the coach and into the woods with your canine friends.

Thanks to Patricia Komar and Google Images.