Green Your Routine For Back-to-School!

Here's a quick list of 8 tips that one of our favorite bloggers, Vanessa Uzupes submitted just in time for the back-to-school transition.

Green Your Routine For Back-to-School!

It’s back to school time, and it has been another great opportunity to evolve our family's green strategies by adding a few new ones to the list. Here are eight green ideas we have applied to help green our school routine:

1. Purchase or acquire used clothing. There are a few new dresses for my daughter in the mix thanks to a recent birthday, but I do my best to shop local second-hand shops and yard sales. We also get some great hand-me-downs from friends and neighbors when we let them know that we're open to helping them find a new home for their unwanted items! It has been a win-win situation for saving money and recycling too. When time permits, organizing a clothing swap among a group of friends is a fun and social way to accomplish a useful outcome!

2. Re-purpose clothing. Too-short pants are now cut-offs and the sewing machine is set to sew on a border to lengthen a few others. A patch or two has been added to cover an unsightly stain or unseemly rip. A previously plain shirt has been reborn with some unused buttons and shiny adornments from worn out clothes cluttering the drawers. Voila, everything old is new again!

3. Reuse supplies. Before hitting the nearest store for that long supply list of required school supplies, we scour the house for what we already have and ask family and friends to donate items gathering dust around their homes to the cause. Using last year’s backpack and lunchbox for another round, models the concept for children of not being unnecessarily wasteful. Great inspiration from a friend about making a school tote bag from materials already around the house resulted in a one-of-a-kind, prized possession for my son. This project is now on the to-do list for my daughter because she just loves anything original created just for her!

4. Pack waste-free to minimal waste lunches. Instead of disposeable lunch bags, re-useable lunch boxes that are often recycled themselves are in the line-up. Although the "Bento box" is on my wish list, in the meantime we use safe plastic containers in my “Tupperware” drawer and our reusable sports cups and straws. We have ditched the convenience juices and foods, bottled water, plastic baggies and plastic wraps.  And as much as possible, we will be packing organic or locally grown foods!

5. Reduce emissions. When the weather cools down, we will be biking to school as a family. And if at some point, we become earlier birds, we’ll even consider walking too. In the meantime, while waiting for the weather to change, we'll be curb side (sweating) with the engine off to reduce pollution and fuel use, hoping all the while that others will follow suit so everyone can enjoy fresh air as we all wait in line!

6. Double duty all that paper. The paperwork will soon start to stream home. Once read, the leftover paper will be cut up to be used for notes, shopping lists and likely confetti (very popular in our house) before going to their final resting place. Once admired and loved on the refrigerator, those precious pages of artwork will decorate our daughter‘s room, wrap a few gifts and get turned into greeting cards for loved ones. And before any of the favorites get recycled, reused or renewed, we always make sure to capture a digital image of them first!

7. Encourage recycling. Asking questions of school personnel to find out what they do to recycle and reduce waste may reveal opportunities to work with them to get a new/better plan in place. Could they consider utilizing more online forms to eliminate paper? Asking the teachers what everyday materials they might be able to use for art/science projects could lead to a whole host of opportunities to find new uses for unwanted items. Sometimes rocks, shells, leaves, buttons, greeting cards, fabric/paper scraps, paper towel rolls, jars/food containers, yarn scraps, etc. can be creatively transformed into imaginative children's work. We've noticed in our children that a lot of pride comes from the resourcefulness applied in making recycled art!

8. Volunteer. While not experts on our planet, we are concerned about its current direction. Teachers seem to really appreciate parents volunteering time in the classroom. Last year I had a blast on International Oceans Day leading discussions about the environment with simple ideas about improving it, using an ocean theme. We read a book, discussed the oceans and sea creatures, did a recycled craft project and shared real life experiences about what we could do to make the ocean habitat better. I sent each child home with information they could share with their parents, which I just have to believe they read, researched, and then recycled! Later that same evening, one of the kids suggested that our family do a little clean up at a local beach and we all went out to apply the lesson of the day!

It doesn't take much, but with a little extra time, and attention focused on every day habits and routines, eco-conscious decisions can be made that truly do make a difference for the environment. We can enrich the lives of our children and insure their healthy futures by setting a good example as global citizens of the planet.

Currently, Vanessa Uzupes is a stay at home mother of two young children who utilized her degree in Quantitative Business Analysis in her former life. She has a passion for constantly evolving her lifestyle to be healthier for her family and better for the planet. She finds that her ideas and approaches often end up motivating family and friends and she hopes that you will be inpired to make some changes too. Vanessa is a self-described, concerned inhabitant of this beautiful Earth with a desire to share information, ideas and stories from her own explorations, experiments, and research. She welcomes kind comments.