Green Options

Car companies like Tesla, Toyota and Nissan are all scrambling for a piece of the EV market. Heck, even cities like San Francisco and Portland want some.  But they all just got pwned by these kids. These vehicles run on everything from solar to soy!

Texas Teen Buys Car Off eBay, Makes It Electric

Luke Laborde turned a 32 mpg gas-burning Bradley GT II kit car into a [...]

I was particularly disturbed by a recent article in Newsweek. The magazine sat around my house for weeks (what parent has time to read a whole article?) until the article Tales of a Modern Diva caught my attention.

This story shared some shocking statistics about this generation of young girls, and their use of cosmetics that stopped me in my tracks. As a feminist and critic of the relentless media exposure most children face daily, I aggressively limit the amount of media my girls are exposed to. But ultimately, it will catch up with them, by way of their peers.

First of all, the whole idea that there is a reality show about the beauty industry of toddlers makes me nauseas (Toddlers and Tiaras on TLC). Add that to the fact that now there are actual spas for the girls and the preteen set, and I am tempted to take my girls and run for the hills in a hut with no Internet, TV and home schooling. In some ways, though, I might just be putting off the inevitable.

Here are a few statistics to consider from this article:

The Magical World Of Disney And Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth Are Bringing Teens Across America To The Front Of The Line In The Fight Against Climate Change.

About 2,000 teens have signed on with an organization called Inconvenient Youth to tell their friends, neighborhoods, generation and anyone who will listen that the time to take action is now. Why? The founder of Inconvenient Youth, Mary Doerr, believes the young people “can solve it.”

This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.

What do you get when you combine recycled newspapers, #2 graphite and the breezy scent of bubble gum. Well of course that would be a Smencil.

Smencil brand pencils are one of the best ideas we have seen for getting kids and teens excited about recycling and thinking green. They are very easy to understand and the kids love them.

Smencils start as old newspaper tightly rolled around a #2 graphite writing core until pencils of typical thickness are formed. Then they’re hardened - allowing them to be sharpened just like wood pencils.

Next they are soak with gourmet liquid scents and once dried the erasers are attached and stickers are applied around each unit to identify which scent was infused into each Smencil.

Lastly, each Smencil is put into its own Freshness Tube. Scents are guaranteed to last up to two years, in or out or their tubes.

The best way to find out how important the environment is to Korean youths, I thought, is to ask them. Luckily, I happen to know a number of Korean youths: they’re my English students. Ah! A captive audience.

So, I handed out strips of paper to each student and asked them to anonymously mark the answer choice that they agreed with. On the paper were three lines:

• Protecting the environment is very important to me.
• Protecting the environment is a little bit important to me.
• Protecting the environment is not important to me.