My mother, the nice Jewish lady seen here at her box at the Hollywood Bowl,  is among the biggest paper and water consumers in the country. It hasn’t been easy getting her to turn over a new leaf. (Or rather, fewer of them.)

She has a varied and colorful history of helping herself to fistfuls of disposable napkins at restaurants, collecting hundreds of brown paper grocery bags from Gelson’s Market and requiring daily soaks or showers. She’s pretty darn clean, my mother.

“I never, ever get dressed before bathing,” she has always told me.

“What? So you’ve never heard of French cologne?”

Last summer, I played the dutiful daughter and learned Italian to help mom out on our trip to Italy in September. Turns out, the only phrase that came in handy from Rome to Como was piu l’asciugamani, por favore: More towels, please. Uttered even more frequently to the nice Italian chambermaids was piu faccia l’asciugamani: More face towels!

If there’s someone out there who uses more wash cloths than my 80-year-old mother, I’d like to meet her. No exaggeration, there were several 3-foot high stacks of  Italian terrycloth squares atop the marble vanity of each hotel we visited. How does one person use so many towels without wiping off their face?

The thing is, she would never use a towel more than once. Some people go through towels but they hang them to dry and use them again. Mom won’t even wear one of her 200 Façonnable print blouses more than once without dry cleaning it. Who knew daily treks to Gelson’s Market could work up such a sweat?

And as far as paper napkins and facial tissues are concerned, I think she associates having ample supplies on hand with being well-cared for.

Yep, that’s how Cherie rolls. I love her dearly and wouldn’t trade her in for anyone (except of course, Joan Rivers, and who wouldn’t?). But I have been frustrated trying to convert her to the ways of the unwashed revolutionaries fighting to conserve resources.

Funny, mom is a dichotomy in some ways; she stays out of the sun, shuns drugs (even aspirin) and sips herb tea instead of coffee. But she can’t seem to get on board that eco bus, apart from abiding by L.A. drought restrictions on water use.

Before he died two years ago, my dad, a real estate developer, considered himself to be an early conservationist.

The logo on his office stationary read, “The environment is our business.” He was  frugal and a stickler about turning off lights, shutting off air, cutting down on sprinkler and telephone use, buying used cars for his kids and only building as much housing as he felt the market required. He was one of the first advocates of a mass transit system in L.A. He swore by solar power and used it to warm his pool starting in the 70s.

After dad’s years of chronic scolding, mom did learn to turn off lights and only cranks the heat when she is “freezing to death.”

Yet visits to her McMansion in the Valley become guilt-ridden ones for me and my conscientious kids as we stand idly by watching Nana toss paper and plastic into the garbage. Her gated community even offers recycling and composting bins to be picked up by the waste removal company. The kids and I have explained the benefits of composting to her many times, to which she has replied:

“Why would you throw extra food into a container when you have a garbage disposal?”

In truth, I can’t see her stomaching such a crude process as composting. After all, her breakfast room place settings go into the dishwasher even if no one has touched the utensils. “They’ve been out and so they are dirty,” she informs me. She glares at me with one of those disapproving scowls as if to say that I’m the one who’s crazy.

I forgive her these limitations. Mom is what you call a neat freak. My therapist has urged me not to elaborate.

The good news is that I am making a few inroads with the recycling lectures.

“Now, listen carefully, Mom, when you use a glass jar, let’s say of spaghetti sauce, and you toss it into the trash, it goes into a landfill. Landfills are really full and bad for the planet. If you recycle it, someone can reuse the glass to make something consumers can use.”

For years, she has refused to buy these arguments from me, her youngest. But the other day, when I questioned her about trash disposal again on the phone, she checked in with my older sister who was sitting nearby.

“Do you recycle your trash?” she asked Deb, while I waited patiently for the survey results. “Yes, of course I do,” said my sister. She’s the oldest.

“Oh,” said mom, now seemingly convinced. “I’ll have to tell Mariano (her helper) to start separating the stuff.”

And to think, all it took was a family intervention.

Main image: Visual Panic

Other images: Luanne Bradley

Their good friends, the fuzzy white polar bears, are losing their icy homes. Rising sea levels will wash away those nice pastel houses along the beach. Some day, every moving thing that relies on gas -  cars, trains, ships and planes – will come to a screeching halt and the world will be in shock because people won’t know how to live, work, feed themselves or get around.

These are real fears being shared with children – and not just around my own dinner table.

Adults who are well informed, card-carrying conservationists often articulate these concerns with the greatest of intentions. They believe we are deep in the trenches in the war against global warming and the over-consumption of resources, and the time to act is now. We are amiss if we don’t warn the next generation.

But should we be drawing better boundaries when it comes to coloring the picture for the under-18 crowd?

Children who already lack the freedom we enjoyed to jump on bikes and go exploring until dark might be further impaired by negative messages that often accompany environmental concerns -  messages that convey their future looks frighteningly grim.

“When I have children, I worry that the world will be ruined and we won’t have a good life if people keep littering and polluting,” says my own 10-year-old, Lauren Bradley. “That might happen.”

Clearly, there’s a right way and a wrong way to prepare our youth to become the stewards of the planet without robbing them of the short-lived innocence of childhood.

For guidance, I went to Daniel Meyer, renowned Bay Area Environmental Educator and classroom science professor. He has spent the past 20 years teaching children about their relationship with nature, including outdoor adventures in the Yosemite Valley.

“Kids don’t have the perspective to understand some issues and tend to  internalize them,” observes Meyer. “You can have informative discussions with them about doing their part without making it a doomsday discussion.”

Here are some of Meyer’s do’s and don’ts for preparing, rather than scaring, the next generation of conservationists.

Image: Earthfirst

Do: Put the big picture in perspective. Geologically speaking, we are insignificant in terms of the earth’s existence. Many things have come and gone before us and will after us. And the only true thing we can do is live responsibly and respect and embrace the environment and everything in it and on it.

Don’t: Dump problems on children they cannot solve. Children can’t prevent an animal from going extinct. That’s the job of scientists, governments and big business.

Image: Brzegowiec

Do: Keep it simple. Responsible stewardship starts with light bulbs, composting and recycling. Give kids issues they can tackle so that they feel connected to repairing the earth: They can re-plant. They can fix the trail systems at the Golden Gate Park. They can make posters at school about composting. They can learn to become smart consumers. Child-geared, educational tools, such as The Story of Stuff video by Annie Leonard can help.

Don’t: Take away their innocence by focusing on the negative. The downside is kids can become fixated when they aren’t fully educated about global warming and pollution. Kids who are innocent can still come up with solutions.

Image: Incase Designs

Do: Investigate how they can do their part in responsible philanthropic giving by researching various causes and how money is directed. Let them select the cause. This empowers them in doing their part.

Don’t: Miss the opportunity to spend time with your children outdoors. It’s one things to talk trash around the dinner table and another to experience with them the beauty of the nature you strive to protect. Check out the Nature Rocks Campaign for tips.

Image: National Geographic

Main image: Zanastardust

Now that my pancakes have been flipped (and, in one instance, removed from the ceiling), it’s time for me to take up Caitlin’s challenge and observe my very own Eco Lent.

I’ve already decided what I’m giving up for 40 days. It wasn’t very difficult.

First, a little about me – and a confession. Of the whole EcoSalon team, it’s a safe bet that I’m the least eco-friendly. I recycle, I try to shop ethically, and I walk or cycle everywhere (I’ve never learnt to drive, initially because I never needed to, now because I just don’t want to). But am I truly “eco”? It’s a question I struggle with – because sometimes I find myself cutting corners, particularly with convenience food. And sometimes I’m horrified at the garbage I leave in my wake.

So. For 40 days and 40 nights, I’m foregoing as much pre-packaged and pre-prepared (by other people) food as I can. I’m halfway to this goal already, since I already try to minimize food-wrapping waste, and I adore cooking. But that other half…well, that will be a good, healthy stretch. Here are my self-imposed rules.

Stay Loose. When wandering through the local markets or grocery stores, I’m only buying loose, unpackaged fruit and vegetables. I’ve lined my day-rucksack with a collection of cloth totes, and I’ll be using these to pop my dry food purchases into, instead of using the all-too-common filmy plastic bags ripped off a roll. I’ll also be sourcing out places in my home city of York that sell the freshest unpackaged food – farm shops, for example.

Nix Plastic. Where it’s unavoidable, I’ll use paper bags or even cardboard wrapping (no, Amazon – your packaging is still way too much for me) and I’ll compost this paper when I’m done. I’ll SIGG (or use the best alternative). Glass that I can recycle? Sure thing. I’ll also carry a few square cloths and brush up on my furoshiki-folding skills. But plastic? Not on your nelly. Maybe plastic is unavoidable in today’s modern world – but I intend to find out the hardest way I can.

Have All the Fun. I truly couldn’t love cooking more – that alchemy of mind, soul and ingredients that delights the senses and makes you realise how tragically inadequate packaged food usually is. I love cooking but I don’t do enough of it, because I don’t plan ahead. Collecting the right ingredients and freeing enough time to cook requires forethought. So I’ll be doing a lot of forethinking over the next 40 days. (I’m also planning to trawl back through our archives and rediscover the tastiest recipes, starting with Vanessa’s Butternut Squash Coconut Curry. Ah, curry).

A month is plenty of time to iron out some bad habits and discover some new, better ones. That sounds like a recipe for a successful Eco Lent.

Useful links: WRAP; TheSite.org; Food Production Daily.

Image: dvs.