The key when encouraging your child to become more environmentally friendly is to make it fun and interesting. If you are creative then they will get involved and are more likely to remember what you have said! The earlier you start the better so take a look at the tips outlined below for a few ideas!

• Invent games! Children love to play games and can relate to them so hiding a message in the game is a great way to get the green message through. For example, you could play I-Spy with green items within the house or paint wildlife… anything that you can think of to get the ball rolling!

• Encourage them to decorate their own rooms with old furniture! They can paint it and alter it themselves as long as they use green items only.

• When you are eliminating things you no longer need and organizing the stuff you have, send them on a treasure hunt. Encourage them to figure out which toys they don’t want any more so other boys and girls can have them, nothing goes to waste.

• Get them to help in your vegetable patch! Give them a patch of their own to nurture so that they can watch the plants grow and feel proud of themselves.

• Involve them in household recycling. It gives them a little responsibility and teaches them about recycling at the same time.

• Buy your children a bike from an early age and take them to the local shops on it regularly. This is much better than driving there and will be fun for them as well.

• Join a local environmental group with your children. There are community groups that are designed for parents and small children and they are of real value when encouraging your children to go green.

• Get creative! Encourage your children to make toys and games from recycled materials and birthday cards for family members from old cards that you have previously received.

All of these activities will engage your children and allow them to see that being environmentally friendly is actually a lot of fun. They will soon be environmental converts for life!

Having a baby does not put an end to your ecotourism adventure! Some ecotourism holidays are now actively marketed as family or child friendly, and the ecotourist vacation can provide quite an experience for both parents and children. This is because everyone can learn something from the vacation, including the baby.

First and foremost, babies pick up on a change in mood far more quickly than adults do and, as such, he or she will recognize a relaxing environment. Ecotourism resorts are famed for their ability to set people at ease, to help them become one with nature and to relax them. This will pull the family together in one harmonious unit. As such, your baby will benefit from the tranquillity and will indeed be happier for the duration of the holiday. This makes it fun in itself, but there is more!

Various family friendly ecotourism destinations have a range of facilities for small children, all of which make it easier for you to include the children in fun activities and educate them at the same time. Local businesses and individuals benefit from the tourist trade so they are willing to give something back and can communicate with your child in a unique way. By the age of three, it is possible for your child to have a loose grasp on helping out in a wide variety of fun filled activities that involve interaction with the local environment and wildlife. This in itself marks the ecotourism vacation a unique and innovative experience.

Of course, the child friendly ecotourism vacation is not as intensive as an adults only one because children tire easily, but there are areas of the world that welcome children, including babies. Costa Rica is one example. Your baby or toddler can enjoy the colourful side of nature in the eight national parks. They can bird watch and look out for the colourful toucans or watch the monkeys playing in the rainforest. They will be delighted by the activity and learn things, even from an early age.

If you want to make your ecotourism vacation especially fun for your baby or small child then why not go to Lapland? A good number of the tours there are labelled as ecotourism and the children can meet huskies, reindeer and even Santa whilst learning to respect the environment. It is certainly something different yet extremely fun. And the beauty of it is you are giving back to the community as well as providing your family with a firm foundation for education!

That’s right – a household pet can help you to become more environmentally friendly. Many households do not think of a pet as an aid in the quest for a greener way of life, but they are. This applies to any pet, but there are some that are greener than others. The more environmentally animals are the rabbits and guinea pigs that generally tend to eat plant matter, but if you already have a dog or cat then you can tap into the benefits they can offer as well, some of which are:

• Use leftover food for their meals. For example, potato peel and vegetable leaves can be given to guinea pigs and rabbits to eat. Dogs will generally eat any leftovers, although some may not be beneficial to their health, pastry leftovers for example.
• Although you may recycle magazines and newspapers, it is not advisable to recycle shredded bills and so on with personal information on it. You could use that paper for bedding for rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs and mice, and it also makes an environmentally friendly cat litter as well.
• You can make an excellent dog cushion out of old materials that you no longer use. Simply use an old quilt cover for the outer casing and fill it with towels, sheets and clothing that are not good enough to donate to charity or recycle.

Of course, there are many more things you can do via your pet to make your household more environmentally friendly, but your pet has a far more valuable function.

If you have young children then you can use the pet to educate them of the values of being environmentally friendly as well. Using your pet as an example will make the importance of looking out for the environment more potent. Children tend to think about things they can relate to and they very often cherish a pet more than everyone else in the house put together! As such, a pet can help you get the green balance just right!

There are ways and means to get your hands on recycled books today, which provide a great foundation for educating your children in an eco friendly manner from very early on. For example, books are readily available from charity for no other reason than other individuals have no further use for them and have the same attitude towards recycling that you do! Certain websites also have a used book section now as well so you can buy recycled books online. This will save you significant amounts of money and give your children an eco friendly education for years to come!

There are also books available that have messages within the story as well. These provide another great way to educate your children the eco way because the hidden messages alert them to the plight of the environment and give them a sense of social responsibility to do the best that they can in helping out by recycling and saving energy. The Barefoot Books series is excellent. These books are informative and fun, so they are just what you are looking for!

If you do wish to buy a new book then you should always look for those that are printed on recycled paper. The printing may not always be like new but at least you will have done your part! Similarly, when you have finished with the books you can take them back to the charity shop, sell them online, join a community group that promotes the exchange of resources or give them to a local school. Whichever option you choose, you know they will be going to good use, more specifically to educate another child and thus give the environment a better chance of survival in the future!

There is nothing much to environmentally friendly parenting and most of the things you can do to stay green are common sense more than anything. None of the below tips are elements of daily life that easily spring to mind when you have a thousand other things whirling around your head! But they will help to give you an idea of what is involved in environmentally friendly parenting and hopefully inspire you!

• You will not have to think about car-pooling until your child is of school age, but it is worth getting into the habit as soon as possible. Share a car when you have errands to run and your partner or spouse has to go to. You will save money and do your bit to help the environment! Car-pool whenever you can.
• Get into cooking! Using organic ingredients and cooking all of your meals from scratch will help to reduce the amount of rubbish that you are throwing away. Because there will be no convenience foods in your diet, there will be a reduced amount of packaging to throw away. This will also benefit your child, who will be eating good, wholesome foods!
• Unplug every item of electrical equipment when it is not in use. Not only will you be making your home more efficient in terms of the energy usage, but you are also baby-proofing your home by reducing the risk of electrocution that can result from little ones playing with cords.
• Recycle everything! This includes the usual bottles, jars and cans, but also items like baby clothing and toys. There are usually community associations that organise swaps and charitable events, or you could easily take old items to the local charity shops instead to help others as well as the environment.
• Practice green household chores. Instead of using a tumble dryer to dry baby clothes, use an outdoor washing line instead. Not only are you being more energy efficient but also you are improving the quality of your baby’s clothes. They will be softer to the touch and will last much longer.

So now you know some of the best environmentally friendly tactics for, you just have to get your thinking cap on and examine any other ways that you could change your lifestyle and home practices for the good of the environment and your family!

Recycling also has the added bonus of being able to save money, and this will be a key plus for those families that are expecting a new addition any time soon, or indeed have recently had a new baby.

As a result of both of the above factors, recycling is a fabulous idea that can really improve household efficiency both in terms of the environment and your finances. The ten ideas below will help you to get started and may even inspire you to come up with ideas of your own!

1. Use old clothing that cannot be donated to charity when you have a clean out. Towels can be cut into face cloths and shirts can be cut up into new dusters or cleaning cloths!
2. When you are eliminating things you no longer need, divide everything that you intend to throw away in to piles for recycling. Reuse anything you possibly can. You may be able to donate to charity or even sell your old items on eBay for a little extra cash. Any old bottles and tubes can be emptied and recycled.
3. Have a compost bin for any gardening waste or vegetables that are not eaten. You can give this back to the Earth by using it for fertilising the soil in your garden later.
4. Look to make toys out of old household items. Your children can get involved in this. For example, roll on deodorant bottles can be used for painting tools, old cardboard boxes can be transformed into a dolls house and so on!
5. Recycle old cans by finding an aluminium can depot that will pay for them. This will encourage your children to collect them because it is a little extra pocket money!
6. Use any prepaid envelopes that come through the post to send your own mail! You can cross the original address out or cover it with recycled paper and address it to where it needs to go!
7. Pass magazines on to friends or drop them off at your local community centre or medical practice so that they can be read again and again!
8. Reuse old pasta sauce jars, pickled onions or homemade jam. You can keep reusing them again and again, plus they will keep your homemade food fresh.
9. Baby food jars can be used for potting seedlings in the spring. You and your children can nurture them before planting them outside.
10. Soak old tumble dryer sheets in boiling water after use to get all of the remaining softener out of them and then reuse them as baby wipes with a little baby lotion.

All of the above tips may seem like common sense when you read them but there are plenty of creative ways that you can reuse household items to save you money and become more efficient.

Easy! If you have a little one, use those items in an art project! By creating art with your toddler, you can glean a time of learning and togetherness out of an unneeded item. It might still end up in the landfill eventually, but at least you’ll have redeemed another use out of it.

Collages are terrific fun for small children. Use the back of a piece of junk mail or cereal box for your backing. Now find items to glue down in an interesting arrangement. Cotton from medicine bottles can become clouds or white birds. Lids can become wheels on a bus. Scraps of fabric, patterned envelope linings, and foil food wrappers can all be reused in this profitable learning time.

Another consideration about recycling and children’s art is what to do with the finished works. Sure, it’s greenest to go paperless and email Grandma with the latest exploits of your little ones, but if Grandma is not online yet, consider writing letters to her on the back of those little scribble drawings your tot makes. She’ll love her bonus “letter” from the grandbaby.

A number of household items can be recycled into playthings for a small child. Every child enjoys playing with a large cardboard box. Maybe you can even get your hands on an appliance box. These can be artistically remade into wonderful, whimsical playhouses, forts and castles that can be used indoors anytime or outdoors in nice weather.

Have you been tempted to pick up one of those cute plastic paint smocks for your toddler? If you can’t find one second hand at a yard sale or thrift shop, cut a large bib from an old shower curtain or table cloth, and it will work just as well. In addition, if you save your roll-on deodorant bottles, they can be rinsed out (pry the ball out first) and filled with finger paint. Replace the ball, and you have a paint roller that’s fun to draw with.

It is possible to spend a lot of money and generate a lot of landfill trash when buying art materials for your small children. By using your imagination and creativity, most of these items can be easily substituted with recycled materials found around the home.

If you have curbside recycling pick-up services, count yourself fortunate. Many communities still do not offer this service, so people who wish to recycle not only have to know where to take their items, they have to make a special trip on a regular basis. If you’re in such a community, maybe you could write letters to the editor or contact your local authorities to alert them to the need for curb-side recycling pick-up.

Whether or not you have curbside pick-up, organization ideas that work in other parts of the home will also help with getting your recycling challenges under control. For instance, you will want to have your sorting bins in the most convenient area, which means it will need to be close to where you are working when you are cooking or whatever. If you have a handy trash can for the non-recyclables, but the recycle bins are downstairs in the basement or out in the garage, it will require more motivation on your part to take those items where they need to go instead of just tossing them in the trash.

“Do it now” is another good slogan for all aspects of an organized life. If you procrastinate about taking your cans and bottles to the recycling bin, you will wind up with your counters cluttered. Then when you get around to going through it all, you’ll have a big job on your hands. Rinse that item and take it to its bin just as soon as you are through with it.

If you are remodeling the kitchen or utility room, consider having a built in area for keeping recycling bins. Just make sure they are easy to access so that you can remove them and clean around them easily when you need to.

Finally, don’t forget the importance of reducing the recyclables before you even bring them into the house. Get yourself off junk mailing lists. Buy bulk beans and grains and see if your health food store will let your bring in your own containers for them. They can weigh the container before you fill it and then again after you fill it, eliminating even the plastic bags you usually go home with. Think before buying plastic junk. Do you already have something you can use instead? Look for foods and toiletries that come in simple packaging that doesn’t include numerous needless boxes and wrappers.

With a little organization and care, you can keep up with recycling even when the kids are small. And just think what a good example you will be for them!