Green Options

My kids seem to have always been climbers. My theory is partly that we live next to a nice big park with natural areas and playgrounds and go there every day, giving the girls a LOT of practice in their few short years, but it also just seems innate in them to go up, up, up. They both started scaling the big-kid monkeybars at a young enough age that other parents would occasionally snatch them down and start to give me a lecture before realizing that no, lady, I am NOT the babysitter, and we are about to have ourselves a little talk.

My girls seem to feel, however, (and I have to say that I agree), that trees are MUCH better for climbing than your general, run-of-the-mill playground monkeybars. Trees are more challenging, in that the layout of their branches and the way you can climb them is different for every tree, often different for the same tree as the seasons pass. Trees are real, as opposed to the manufactured play of the monkeybars, allowing children to test their actions in the real world, as opposed to the world made for them. And trees are natural, allowing my daughters, every time they climb, to learn everything from the texture of the bark to the way branches sway in the wind to the power contained in the height of any simple tree, and the power of being in that tree for yourself.

My kids have been exposed to yoga from the moment they were born (well actually, they were doing yoga in utero).  Sometimes they chose to join in with my practice (my four-year-old son’s favorite asana is savasana), and sometimes they don’t.

They have their own eco-friendly mats, but that is the extent of their own yoga goodies until we got the YogaBuddies CDs.

Future Marine Biologist? Future Environmental Engineer? Future Eco-Savior? Earth Warrior? EcoKid? Planet Patrol? Green Teen? Captain Crunch? ECP readers and Idea hamsters rev your brainpower to gear up for a FREE baby “Treehugger” onesie/tee!

These fun GirlMogul.com tees are a refreshing alternative to the rampant retail ‘pink think’ and “So Sexy So Soon” flash-n-trash that’s predominant in Packaging Girlhood as of late.

GirlMogul’s aspirational identity-wear offers positive personas that are Shaping Youth in favorable ways… I’m sold!

“We believe in encouraging girls’ dreams. You won’t find any princess messages here; just positive, encouraging messages…Future Leader of the Free World, Future CEO, Future Zoologist, Future Brain Surgeon”…

Quite a refreshing change from the snarky tidbits of consumerist tripe with the ‘shop ‘til you drop’ mentality I’ve come across with back to school shopping lately, eh?! Seems like they could use a few more eco-focused nudges toward going green, so I contacted founder Andrea Stein to pitch her the idea of encouraging ECP readers to create the phrase THEY’D most like to see on a tee-shirt…Here’s our mini-interview:

Birgitte Rasine is the chief evolution officer of LUCITÀ, a non greenwashing pioneer in socially responsible design & communications.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever seen a therapist, or known someone who has. Raise your other hand if you’ve ever heard that little voice inside your head telling you you’re not quite so good, not quite so beautiful, not quite so successful, as person X or company Y.

OK ready? now that we’ve all got our hands up in the air, we can all do the wave. You might laugh, but we really should—to clear away all the smoke and circumstance pumped into our media airwaves by a seductive green mist that’s settling heavier and thicker on web sites, print advertisements, TV commercials, product packaging, press releases, and yes especially blogs (not this one though). We’ve all heard the term: greenwashing.