How To Turn Your Parents Green is written by James Russell, illustrated by Øivind Hovland and was supplied by Charlie at Green Books.

Aimed at kids ‘from 8-80′ How To Turn Your Parents Green is a book for a future generation of eco warriors. Presenting the challenge to be green as a battle of the Greens versus the Groans (ungreen adults) the book urging children to become green by fining their parents if they’re not environmentally-friendly.

But it’s more than that, it tries to put the pester power that kids have to good use – turn it away from sweets and candy to switching off the tap and buying local food. And it does this with the help of humorous phrases and great drawings by Øivind Hovland.

Although I make the ludicrous age range for this book, I’m admittedly quite a bit older than those it’s really aimed at. So at first the phrases ‘Ghastly Global Warming’, Hellish Halogens’ and other similarly alliterate and capital lettered ones got on my nerves. But after a while I got used to it and ‘Lazy Train to Chubville’ got me smiling.

While humorous, the book is also informative and it does this cleverly by asking questions but then often making up one of the answers just to make you smile. It nicely explained what a leachate is (rubbish sludge mixed with rainwater) and other facts are presented simply and in a way that a child could easily relate to a parent.

The explanations of subjects like importing fruit from abroad or having a standby button on the TV show how ridiculous they are and that the reader shouldn’t stand for such practices. Luckily it then tells you what you can do about them and gives examples of things done in the past – such as the boy who saved the Severn Beach railway line. Practical examples, goals and checklists make it almost an activity book and even inspired me to do more.

Apart from my initial problem of getting into the book, once you’re used to the style it makes an enjoyable and informative read for all ages. Aimed at kids changing their parents’ habits (fining them for using carrier bags etc), it also has useful tips for turning teachers green and also becoming a green citizen yourself.

Available at from Green Books, How To Turn Your Parents Green costs £6.50, is 91 pages, is printed on Nine Lives recycled paper and published by Tangent Books.

According to research behind a recent BBC Panorama programme called ‘Bottled Water – Who needs it?’ (1), a litre of a well known French mineral water, generates 600 times as much Carbon Dioxide as a litre of London tap water.

I’m as guilty as anyone when it comes to buying the stuff. Ironically I only buy bottled water for the bottle. One for the gym, one for a walk… I keep them knocking around until I lose them or simply get fed up of the sight of them.

It’s crazy when you think about it. Many developed countries, where most of the bottled water is sold, have safe tap water. Over a billion people on this world do not have access to safe water (2), yet when it is flowing freely in our own taps we still find the need to buy it.

Just as crazy is the bottled rain water featuring on the show. The pleasantly named ‘Cloud juice’, comes all the way from King Island, New Zealand. According to the Cloud Juice website the water comes from ‘11,100 km off the Great Southern Ocean where trade winds evaporate pure, clean water into rain clouds that don’t touch land until they meet King Island’ Sounds like a dream doesn’t it? That’s because that’s exactly what they want you to think. Advertising often attempts to link our emotions to a product. Just read a book on Neuro linguistic programming or advertising, and you’ll find that out. However that doesn’t stop London’s Claridges Hotel selling it for £9 ($18) per bottle.

Here’s my own poetic skew on the sales basics of the bottled water industry…

Plastic comes from oil,
Water is free,
Wrap the water in oil,
And sell it to thee.

It’s worth pointing out at this stage that our America uses more than 70 million disposable plastic bottles a day. Just over 60 million of these end up in landfill (3), and the the market in Britain alone is worth £2 billion.

According to the National Geographic if you imagine your water bottle a quarter filled up with oil that’s how much oil it takes to create the bottle. (4) Recyclenow.com reports that recycling one plastic bottle can conserve up to enough energy to light a 60w light bulb for up to 6 hours. (5)

There are pioneers like ‘Belu’, (6) that have started to make bottles out of corn. Not only that they are the first bottled water manufacturer that doesn’t contribute to climate change, but all their profits go to clean water projects as well. If you feel compelled to buy water, even after the World Heath Organisation has given the water supply in your country the green light, buying from companies like Belu is a step in the right direction. Next time I go to the gym I’ll think twice about the volcanic energy, my drink alleges to give me.

(1) BBC Panorama – Bottled water – who needs it? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/7247130.stm
(2) WaterAid – Charity Number 288701 http://www.wateraid.org/
(3) Container Recycling Institute – http://www.container-recycling.org
(4) National Geographic Kids – http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/Stories/SpaceScience/Water-bottle-pollution
(5) Recycle Now – http://www.recyclenow.com/facts/interesting_facts/index.html
(6) Belu, Penguin approved natural mineral water - http://www.belu.org/home.asp

If you are anything like me, you’ll have read a plethora of books about the impending climatic catastrophe were facing, and will have worked out the difference with this disaster story, is that is all backed up by science. Joy!

It comes as no surprise then, that as consumers we’re getting angrier at those companies that talk green, but fail to live up to our expectations. My latest annoyance is the industry of excess packaging. Cling wrapped vegetables, biscuits that come in several wrappers, box after box, after box… Does the consumer really want so much waste?

The Industry Council for Packaging and the Environment argues that ‘Just because we can recycle most materials doesn’t mean we should. Some packaging is simply not worth recycling because it takes a disproportionate amount of energy to collect, clean and transport the materials’(1) . This argument can be turned around, what about all the energy and materials it takes to produce packaging in the first place? More plastic (which comes from oil), more paper, more ink. It’s a rather basic point of view but I personally believe that more packaging not only means a greater cost to the environment, but a greater financial cost to the consumer. The Recycling Consortium estimates that packaging waste constitutes approximately 24– 30% of household waste in the UK and represents £6.50 for each £50 spent (13% of the average shopping bill) (2).

At this point if you don’t really care too much about this issue, let me remind you about all those extra journeys forcing you to take this extra rubbish out to the bin. Not only are you paying more financially, but it’s also costing you more time as well.

I’ll tell you what else makes me angry – people that don’t pay the correct postage (stick with me on this, it will make sense in a moment). The day arrives when it looks like something interesting has arrived through the post (apart from further rubbish). You go to the post office to pay, and your hopes are dashed. They’ve got you again. More stuff you never wanted and you’ve paid for it again.

I hate excess packaging and recently I found a way to channel all my annoyances into something constructive. I’ve found a way to turn those coy consumer woes into costs for the industry.

Conveniently many companies put their address on produce packaging so you can complain if you are dissatisfied. Save up your junk mail envelopes, get yourself a nice batch of penny stamps, and the next time you get something from the shop that has more layers of packaging than the skin of an onion, place it in that used envelope, and send it back to the company with a penny stamp on the front. Personally I like to write something on the front like ‘We want less waste’. The resulting factor? The company has to pay to get their waste back and you feel satisfied that you’ve stuck your two fingers up at a system we never wanted in the first place. Most important of all, hopefully the company gets the message.

I know it’s not the most pressing environmental issue, and I know that there are a whole swathe of other things much more constructive to reduce your impact on the environment, but it sure does make me feel good.

Just remember, consumers are the masters in any consumption society.

(1) INCPEN, The Industry Council for Packaging and the Environment Waste Management Factsheet, http://www.incpen.org/pages/userdata/incp/wastemanFS.pdf 16 Jan 2008

(2)The Recycling Consortium, www.recyclingconsortium.org.uk

A must read for everyone interested in green marketing is Russell Davies’ presentation at Applied Green that took place last year. Russell is the big daddy of planners and communications strategists in the UK as well as globally. He brilliantly discusses potential routes to reinvent consumer capitalism, a cultural and economic phenomena/reality that has such a devastating effects on the environment yet it is fairly naive to hope to eliminate it all together.

Fantastic read.

A few days a go I had found a article in Good Housekeeping which talked about what are these fancy names we put on products in the store like “natural” and “no CFC’s” and what they really mean to the consumer. I had read this article and knew about most of the labels and learned some about these labels but there was one that I was curious what it really means when it is labeled so I thought I would do some some research on this label. The label I was curious and done some research on was “organic” the information I had found online was kinda interesting. So heres what I had found out about organic labels.

Organic is a agriculture product made without pesticide, harmful chemicals, hormones. You can find “organic” on most anything but most of the time it is not completely organic unless you see one of many logo’s like these.

These logo’s on products found in groceries stores are quite hard to get placed and certified on a product because they test just about everything from fertilizers to what the wood was treated with on fences and if one thing that is tested as “modified” the produce won’t be certified to sell as organic. Only 100% organic products may use the organic seal. if a product is 95% is organic they can’t put the organic seal but they can say it is a organic substance. If the product is at least 70% they only can label up to three items that are organic. finally if a item has less than 70% organic they can’t say its organic anywhere on the item. for more information visit this site http://www.ams.usda.gov/nop/FactSheets/Backgrounder.htm Heres the actual chart that was in the magazine Good Housekeeping. In other words your best bet will be finding a product that has a certified seal that states that it is certified “organic” on the product you want to buy.

Before you buy something try to remember what the correct labels for a item should be and what labels you should not buy into on a certain product.

I’m not sure any of this information applies to people in the U.K. but it certain it does apply to the people in U.S.A.

Recently I had been sent a e-mail with a link to this wonderful video that explained that as consumers most of us don’t see or see too little of what the big picture has to tell us about what the real cost of what it takes to produce a product in terms of money, content and pollution to create and make a item we see in a store.

There are five steps in the process of creating product. First there is extraction of natural resources next comes the process of production made from the natural resources, chemicals etc. then comes distribution at your local stores which leads people to consume or buy a product and finally the disposal of the product. This short video digs deeper into these five steps in making and distributing from life to death of a product. The short movie with Annie Leonard is about 20 minutes long which you can see at The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard also on their web page you can watch, download the video which is about 55mb in size, or you can even buy a DVD with this video for $10. I recommend this video for everyone to watch especially for the real consumers that keep buying products more than what the average person may buy in a given month or year. Spread the word about this video it may even get you thinking about what you even buy for the holidays, birthdays party’s or even things you buy for your own self.

So, how do we help the environment without to think that we will lose some of our comfort and doing it without headaches?

Simple!

ENERGY/WATER SAVINGS:

Turn off any light you do not use.

Turn off all stand buy machines that you do not use at night (TV, computers for example).

Use rechargeable batteries (you WILL save a lot of money at the end).

Use fluorescent light-bulbs everywhere you can in your house.

Cook things a few items at the same time: use the steam alone too, when boiling food and put the cover on after having turned the gas/electrics of the cooker off.

Save water by taking more showers than baths. Wash full loads of washing up and laundry (with cold rinse at least for the latter).

FUEL SAVINGS:

Do NOT race off in your car when you are stopped at a traffic light and it turns from a red light to green. Just ease off.

Close all windows when you are on a motorway.

Do a few errands in one go, instead of a few trips a day.

Use the bus, tube even train each time you can.

Walk whenever you can (and that is good for your heart to).

ITEMS/MONEY/TIME SAVINGS:

Buy “as new”: each time you can. A car is a car. Second hands can be quite cheaper and reliable.

For books, audio visual items, apparels and more, buy as new (used) or very good from, for example, amazon.co.uk

Shop in charity shops:

1. Prices are quite competitive.
2. It is like buying an item that you do, by using it again, recycle.
3. You can find collectables for a bargain.

Buy food in bulk and freeze what you can. (you save space and packaging too)

Buy organic whenever you can

Buy local products when you can.

RE-GIVING TO EARTH/PEOPLE:

Recycle what you can, re use what you can, give what you can and only as the last resort, throw away things.

Use e mailing a lot, you save paper. If you send a gift, re use packaging and boxes too.

Volunteer if you can : smiles, hugs, thanks DO make you stronger and more complete as a man.

And that is it: within two or three weeks, that should be in place in your life and it becomes habit