The following is a guest blog post I contributed to raisingthemgreen.com, a website devoted to helping to raise eco-conscious children.
I learned a lot from my year of living off the grid, but I learned even more from moving back to the mainstream. These days, on-grid with a husband, a two-year-old, and another baby on the way, I am faced with the same challenges as nearly all moms in America – most notably a severe lack of the free time I took for granted in Taos.
The question I ask myself most is how do I keep my commitment to green living when bombarded by ads for the copious convenience products – bad for the bank account, bad for the environment – that I can easily convince myself I need? More importantly, how can I teach my children the conservation lessons I learned when living off the grid?
I finally realized that the best thing any of us can do for our children is be a good example. Children learn from mimicking their role models, the most important of whom is their parents. Simply by continuing the low-impact-living habits I developed off the grid, I can teach my daughter and her sibling how to cherish the earth.
Sarah already knows to turn off the light when she leaves the room. She also knows to run water from the tap in a thin trickle, not full-blast, when washing her hands. When she is old enough to understand, we will articulate some more guidelines for other things she observes us putting into practice: only run the washing machine and dishwasher when they are full; wear your clothes more than once before declaring them dirty; recycle rather than discard; eat fresh food with a minimum of packaging; don’t go shopping unless you feel a pressing need for something, and stick to your list once you are in the store; play outside more and keep the TV off.
With the exception of the last one, the idea is to use fewer of the earth’s resources as a whole, rather than making a drastic change in any one area of our lives. But the last suggestion offers some important insight for keeping your ecological footprint to a minimum.
Television panders to our desire to buy things we don’t need. Unnecessary purchases not only deplete our bank balances, but they also have an environmental price tag. That’s because everything comes from the earth: every single item in Toys ‘R’ Us and Baby Gap began its life as part of the planet. Every time you make a purchase, you are consuming the raw materials that were extracted from the earth (sometimes at great environmental cost, such as habitat destruction) plus the energy it took to manufacture the item and transport it to the store where you bought it.
But when you turn the TV off, you cease to be influenced by the ads. You also remove yourself from the pressure to keep up with the fictional Joneses who inhabit your favorite shows. And when you send your kids outside to play instead (and possibly join them), you help instill in them a love for the natural world in all its wonder. There is no finer gift you can give them than that.
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