Green Options

Food banks across the country are seeing longer lines and new faces.  Demand and need are up, but corporate and individual donations are waning as Americans become nervous about their financial future. Meanwhile, food prices have yet to fall.

April 1, 2009 has been declared April Food Day by organizers Pigtown*Design and Easy and Elegant Life; a call to action on behalf of the nation’s hungry.  A plea to donate what you can, in any amount you can; even if it’s only a dollar.

Doctors are reporting an apparent rise in the number of children suffering from kidney stones, and some are placing the blame on a diet of burgers and fries, and other salty foods. 

While kidney stones are generally considered to be an adult problem, many hospitals are seeing an uptick of pediatric cases. In 2005, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia saw less than a dozen cases of kidney stones the entire year; now they see as many as five a week.

The most prominent symptom of kidney stones is extreme pain.

This spring, get your kids outside and help raise funds for National Wildlife Federation at the same time!

How? The National Wildlife Federation has partnered with KaBOOM!, a nonprofit organization that:

“empowers communities to build playgrounds….We passionately believe that play has purpose, and that unstructured play in particular helps make children happier, fitter, smarter, more socially adept and creative.”

KaBOOM! lists playgrounds, parks, and other community “playspaces” on their website, and is campaigning to add another 100,000 in 100 days.
Join the NWF team and for every playspace you enter, the National Wildlife Federation will earn a $1 donation.

Everything we choose to buy has a cost that goes beyond the price tag on the package: a health cost, an environmental cost, and a social cost.  If the average consumer were to take the time to individually research and weigh all these factors, putting together a weekly grocery list would become a full-time job!

Thank goodness for the GoodGuide- an online database that determines, ranks, and scores the impacts of the products we purchase, for us. The GoodGuide rates cleansers, personal care products, toys, and now over 5,000 of the food products we eat.  Another 20,000 food products are slated to be added within the next month.

These food products have been painstakingly researched over the last two years, ranked and explained in a way that is accessible to the common consumer, and make it possible for parents to evaluate at a glance which foods are acceptable for their children to eat- and which foods most decidedly are not.

Look, I’ve watched ER. I know that rampant overuse of antibiotics has given rise to virulent “superbugs” that don’t respond to traditional treatment. I understand my pediatrician is not going to prescribe antibiotics for my kids unless absolutely necessary. I recognize this is an important step in preventing ever more antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria from developing.

Which is why I was so extremely irritated to learn from the New York Times that 70 percent of American antibiotics are given to healthy livestock, contributing to the rise of these resistant strains in our food supply. 

“Five out of 90 samples of retail pork in Louisiana tested positive for MRSA — an antibiotic-resistant staph infection — according to a peer-reviewed study published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology last year….Research by Peter Davies of the University of Minnesota suggests that 25 percent to 39 percent of American hogs carry MRSA.”

With three kids in three different schools, I am buried in paper; the running joke in our household is that I have more homework than my kids do.  Easily three-quarters of what comes home goes straight into the recycling bin.  Multiply that by over 5000 children in our school district and the mind boggles. 

Isn’t there a better way to get information to parents?

One Pennsylvania school thinks so.  Liberty elementary school in Harrisburg now sends school papers electronically through a free website on Shutterfly.  Nearly 90% of the parents at that school opted for the online version- the remainder still preferring paper or lacking home internet access.

The good folks at the Environmental Working Group recently released an updated Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides, the go-to source for which fruits and vegetables carry the most and least pesticides. 

As budgets tighten and some families begin to prioritize their organic options, this list can be invaluable in helping to evaluate the healthiest choices: choosing organic for the produce designated as the “Dirty Dozen” can reduce pesticide exposure by nearly 80 percent.

So, what’s new about the Dirty Dozen? 

I have read three books this past year that I consider to be game-changers; books that subtly shifted and guided the path I want to walk in life.  These were books that caused me to stop to examine and clarify exactly what sort of person, what sort of parent, I want to be.

The first was Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which redefined the way I look at food and moved me to live a more sustainable lifestyle. The second, Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods, opened my eyes to the importance of unstructured nature play on the human psyche.  The third was Rick Van Noy’s A Natural Sense of Wonder: Connecting Kids with Nature through the Seasons.

While Last Child in the Woods is broad, an issue-based philosophical and intellectual work, A Natural Sense of Wonder is a personal compilation of essays touchingly recounting one father’s attempts to cultivate a love of nature in his children.  An essay, Van Noy says, “is an attempt.  This book is a collection of essays about our attempts to get outside.”

According to a British study done by CITV in connection to their new children’ show, Bookaboo, parents struggle to find time to read to their children:

“While 95 per cent of parents have read to their children at some point, only five per cent of those polled read to their children during the day. More than one in ten said they read every couple of weeks or less, and five per cent could not remember the last time they shared a book.”

The 97% of dads who did not read to their children claimed that they could not find time due to work commitments and being too tired. 89% of the moms polled did read to their children, but half admitted that they were distracted by cleaning, cooking, and other household chores.

Toy shopping can be pretty hit or miss.  There’s no telling what the kids will love and what will be tossed into the toy box vortex, never to be seen or played with again.  Many’s the time I’ve bought a toy that I thought was pretty cool- a month later, I’m the only one still playing with it.

To make things more painful, I also like to shop for toys that are educational and made of natural materials.  These sorts of playthings can be quite expensive, and it hurts to see them unused and unloved, or simply too quickly outgrown. It would definitely be nice to give these toys a trial run to see if the kids like them before plunking down the cash.

Enter rentAtoy.com!  Like Netflix for toys, rentAtoy.com allows you to rent toys every month and return them when you’re done.  Shipping is free both ways and there are no late fees.