Sustainability & Everlove

Spring is the perfect time to talk about eco-friendly and sustainable living practices. Not only is everything in bloom, full of new life, but April 22nd is also Earth Day! As parents we all want to make the best choices for our children, but often we forget to keep Mother Earth in mind. Green parenting, and choosing eco-friendly options, doesn’t have to be a tedious chore. You also don’t have to be a compost-heaping, homestead-having professional to help reduce your family’s carbon footprint. (Although if you are a compost pro, I could use some of your knowledge!) In an effort to make the world just a little bit greener, I’m sharing five super simple ways to go green as a new parent! 1. Buy Secondhand One of the most fun parts of expecting a baby is diving into the world of baby gear! Cribs, bassinets, baby carriers, and tiny clothing… ahh! All the heart eyes! While it’s incredibly tempting to rush to the nearest baby store and stock up on all the shiny, new things, you may

A quote from Healthy Child, Healthy World encapsulating the book’s message to all families: “Our design assignment at this moment in our history could, perhaps, be summed up thus: Make a world where we love all the children of all species for all time. If that were the plan, then we’d have no choice but to create a world that is delightfully diverse, economically equitable, ecologically sound, elegant and enjoyable.” ~William McDonough Healthy Child has been a voice for children’s wellbeing for over 20 years. Their journey to educate parents on establishing a nontoxic environment for their babies and children began with this excellent volume on solution orientation, Healthy Child Healthy World, Creating a Cleaner, Greener, Safer Home. This is somewhat of a miniature encyclopedia condensed into one lightweight, easy-to-read, comprehensive reference guide for parents. Author, new father, and passionate advocate,

Admiration and inspiration are a great place to start any size step onto a new road. Bringing our attention to The Heart of Green Award nominees is bound to elevate our motivation for the eco-evolution underway. The creators of this prestigious accolade are found at dailygreen.com. Their website shares blogs, videos and stories that introduce us to some very special people’s work and how they have influenced others positively, as told by their fans, students and children. Here’s one nomination: “It is my great honor and with great enthusiasm that I nominate Jay Golden for the Heart of Green Award. Jay has a clear purpose of using story peppered with fun and humor to bring a message of hope, inspiration, and information to children. I could go on and on about his web series Gorilla in the Green House, which addresses complex issues such as the pacific garbage patch and mountain top removal through song and rhymes…” The Daily Green, the

We cherish our children and devote ourselves to serving their best interests in their health, happiness and development. When they are babies, we hold them close to our hearts to nurture our bond with them. In their maturation they insist on freedom and we gradually let them go to foster their independence. We give them the best guidance we know so they may make the best choices along the pathway of life. Our choices decide the quality of life for generations to come. Our Universal circumstances are now pressuring us as a collective society to choose between health and sustainability or toxins and conventional agriculture Cotton In Our Everyday Lives A helpful fact from the Untouched World website (untouchedworld.com) warns "pesticides used in conventional cotton farming can enter the human food chain. Cotton is grown primarily for its fiber and is regulated as a non-food crop. However, the majority of the cotton plant by weight ends up in our food supply. Cottonseed oil

...I once told a group of environmental activists, "You can save a forest today, but if we don't raise children consciously, it will be cut down tomorrow." From this perspective we see that the well being of children sits at the root of every endeavour. With out happy, healthy children, we have no forest, no peace, and no world. A powerful body of research grounded in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, biology and genetics points us towards the importance of the early years and how bonding, or the lack of it, dictates a child's sense of his relationship to the world and himself. We as parents literally have in our hands, the ability to create a violent culture or a peaceful one. (* Ecologist and Editor of Kindred magazine, one of the world's most endorsed parenting journals, Kali Wendorf is a passionate advocate of social change; particularly as it relates to the role of parents in our society.