Get a Widget for This Title How to Become an Eco-friendly, Green Parent

An Eco-friendly lifestyle especially for parents is about using healthy products in the home and buying products that are good for the environment. Eco-friendly parenting includes the overall lifestyle in which the parents are proving for their children: Food, clothing, renewable resources, cleaning products, and educating the family on how they can contribute to help the planet. Eco-friendly parenting is a mind set and a way of life.

The best place to start is gradual, and this is because a parent needs to be aware of what is truly Eco-friendly and green and what is not. There are many products that consumers may think are healthy and good for the environment but have been falsely advertised and cost more.

The starting point for a family will be to educate themselves on what ingredients are green and what are toxic. These are a few tips on how a parent can get started on becoming an Eco-friendly parent.

Tip # 1: Any product that has a warning sign on it that states "harmful to health", or "do not get in eyes"," do not feed to pets" is a product that is not green, no matter how it is advertised. Most of your Eco-friendly products and food are made with natural ingredients, and will have a stamp of certification on them stating that they are"green" products. There are labels such as Green guard, Green seal, Design for the environment that are safe and certified products. On clothing and interior design fabrics a certified label is confidence in textiles which is back by okeo-tex standard. The point being is to get to know the labels so that you can become an eco-minded shopper.

Tip#2: A great first step that is always a plus with children is to start your own organic garden that can provide food for the home. The best part about an organic garden is that it can be in the ground or even on a patio with pots and growing bags. Cooking with organic products does not have to break the budget especially if you can grow the fresh tomatoes and some fruit trees at home. One of the most valuable fruit trees to plant is a lemon tree, because lemon can be used not only for cooking but for cleaning.

Tip#3: is using green cleaning products and a way to save money is to make your own. One of the best cleaning solutions is using the lemon from the tree and mixing it with water, vinegar, and lavender, this

can clean most surfaces and will cost very little.

Tip#4: Most families spend 80% of their time indoors and one way to help with indoor pollution is to get rid of all of the fake plants around the home and bring in real green plants. This will help to oxygenate the home and add some green decorative touches. The kids will enjoy making containers or coloring pots for the plants to go into. The other wonderful part is that they can put one in their room and learn slowly the responsibility of watering and taking care of the plant.

Tip#5: This may cost a little more but is well worth it in the long run and that is buying organic meat and milk products. This is so important for a child's health not to be eating foods that have added hormones, antibiotics, processed ingredients and artificial flavors.

Tip#6: Learning and teaching the kids about the environment and finding ways for them to contribute to the cause by, simply show them small steps like using bags from home for the groceries instead of plastic. Recycling bins in the home so they can learn to distinguish what is recyclable and what is not. Picking up trash in the street and throwing it away. Turing off lights and water in the house to save electricity and resources.

More people are becoming aware of the need to adopt a healthier, eco-friendly lifestyle and by teaching our children as well, we can begin to create future generations of eco-friendly minded individua