First Kanye West and Jamie Foxx, now gold diggers have upset environmentalists and economists. It’s been like 1849 online with blogs abuzz over gold prices, prospectors and water use in California.

The precious metal is priced at a record dollar high now, thanks in part to China and India snapping up gold reserves. Panic and pricing like that drives laid-off Californians to go panning and miners to “explore,” sometimes damaging the farthest corners of the Earth to get gold.

Eco- and business-bloggers alike want to know: Is the “value” of the ore real, especially since jewelry demand declined in the recession, and industrial demand for gold can often be met with other materials?

A fashion and custom jewelry designer, Lisa Linhardt, of Linhardt Design in New York City, says lots of bling seekers have no idea what environmental impact their fashion choices have until they find her. Focused on making “beautiful, sculptural pieces” first, she is also a green gold jeweler, in a good way.

Linhardt buys 100% recycled gold from casting houses and refineries that extract it from post consumer material, not newly-mined. She can also melt the jewelry you never wear to form something new in her studio (constructed with reclaimed barn wood). Gold’s value is real, she believes, but the industry needs a makeover.

Other designers should demand “Strict gold certification so we know what we’re buying is 100% recycled, and that the labor involved is fair trade,” she suggests. For now, she’s willing to do the original research and footwork herself.

Basic Reading:

“Jewelers are increasingly concerned about young shoppers who are becoming more educated about the impact of their purchasing decisions…” - GreenBiz.com feature on Cartier’s buying more responsibly-mined gold

“Gold is unlike any other commodity. It is costly to extract from the earth and to refine to a reasonable degree of purity. It is costly to store. It has no remaining uses as a producer good – equivalent or superior alternatives exist for all its industrial uses…Surprisingly people like to attach it to their earlobes or nostrils or to hang it around their necks.”- Financial Times blog entry discussing the true value of gold

“Many want to hide the unsavory aspects of how business is conducted in the jewelry industry. But a Blue Sky approach would have us differentiate ourselves by eliminating anything that disguises, hides or obfuscates practices within our industry. We want to differentiate ourselves by being upfront and having full disclosure. Then we want to advertise where we are supporting fair and ethical practices.” – An open letter to jewelers on how to deal with the “dirty” gold issue in FairJewelry.org

“Driven by record-high gold prices – [recently] $1,056 an ounce, double that of just three years ago – prospectors are flocking to the state… Gold mining permits, or claims, on file with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for California have shot from 15,606 in 2005 to 23,974 this year…” – San Francisco Chronicle story on the New California Gold Rush

“California’s second gold rush has also created one recession-proof business. Keene Engineering of Chatsworth, Calif., makes the equipment you need to find gold – from plastic pans to large commercial rigs. The owners say their business has doubled…”- NBC Los Angeles segment on Gold Prospectors in Southern California

Further resources:

MotherJones feature on the history of land use in California

The official homepage of the No Dirty Gold campaign lead by Oxfam and Earthworks

A Geology.com guide to the many uses of gold

A Wall Street Journal story on a predicted rise in demand for gold jewelry

This is the third installment of EcoMeme, a column featuring eco news, tech and business highlights by new EcoSalon writer and columnist Lora Kolodny.

Image: courtesy Linhardt Design Studio

There’s a sad sight. After they’ve lugged your belongings from one corner of the world to the other and obviously won’t last another mile, the final stop for your careworn companions is the trash. There’s no alternative. It’s a fact.

Nonsense, says the team at Junktion!

If you’re keen to make your life a trashless one (particularly on Tuesdays), there are many ways to upcycle your garbage – but there’s a limit, surely? There are some items that you can’t do anything with – like empty gas bottles…?

No trying this at home, please. Junktion are professionals and know how to get into gas bottles safely!

Based in Tel Aviv and founded in 2008, this upcycled design company is interested in all the everyday things folk leave behind (rather like the Wombles, then). They’re keen to challenge our concept of “junk”, and they think there’s quite enough stuff in the world already for their creative purposes.

A car trunk door becomes a sofa. A chopper bicycle reforms itself, Transformers-style, into a stool. Metal piping becomes a classy-looking towel rail.

And if it’s attention-grabbing decor you’re after, how about this industrial-style octopus of a lamp, made from a metal cooking pot writhing with swarms of illuminated teapots? Or desklights make of bakelite-style phones?

Junktion trades out of their shop in Tel Aviv, asking locals to supply them with the raw materials. If they opened near you, would you be a regular customer?

Images: Junktion (via Haute*Nature) and Phineas H.

As a rule, hospitals aren’t all that keen on the alcohol industry. Alcohol, after all, is seen as causing many of the accidents that bring victims through their emergency room doors every day.

But one hospital in LaCrosse, Wisconsin is starting to see the alcohol industry in a totally new light. Gundersen Lutheran Hospital and the local City Brewery are participating in a joint heat and power project with the potential to create about 3 million kilowatt hours of energy a year.

The project consists of capturing the methane gas released by City Brewery during its brewing process, and using it to run a biogas Jenbacher engine which, in turn, feeds electricity into the grid. This electricity is credited to the hospital by Xcel Energy (a local power company), and is just one of the many ways in which Gundersen Lutheran Hospital hopes to reach its goal of becoming 100 percent energy independent by 2014.

But the hospital isn’t the only one gaining from this project. Heat generated from the Jenbacher engine is also being captured and re-used by City Brewery to assist with the brewing process.

Looks like, at least in some circumstances, hospitals and alcohol can get along.

Image: boliston

If you’re sending correspondence through the mail these days, why not design your own stamps to promote your green message?

Many sites, including Zazzle.com, allow you to either select from their designs or customize your own using photos or images downloaded from your computer.

If you decide to make stamps for a special occasion, remember to weigh whatever you’ll be mailing before you order so you can specify the correct postage amount. If you aren’t going the route of Evites or other email invitations, using stamps that say something special, and green, is a great option.

Here are ten designs I found at Zazzle with cool green themes:

1. Six Reasons to Plant a Tree

2. Fair Trade Only

3. Got Bamboo?

4. Dreaming of a Green Christmas

5. Hang Dry

6. Love Your Mother

7. Love it or Leave It

8. Kiss Me

9. Like No Tomorrow

10. Burn Fat Not Oil

Images: Zassle.com

My lovely, celebrity-style dressing room is a spare bedroom I stole in the house, a spare that once housed a maple crib, green nursing glider and armoire of precious, spit-up stained Baby Gap dresses on mini-hangers.

Today, it’s my own little retail Mecca (organic, of course). But I do allow my daughters to visit and check out the blouses and shoe rack, and yes, even borrow on occasion. That sort of thing was taboo when I was growing up. Moms were moms.  Friends were the ones loaning stuff.

My own stylish mother (here with me and Grandma Zelda) towered over me at 5-foot-9 (not counting the beehive do) and always wore at least a size 14. She wasn’t a Laker like Julia Child and her sister, Dorothy, but when she got married, she wore flats so not to surpass 6-foot dad.

I hung out in Mom’s cavernous walk-in closet while she was away at luncheons. But no way could I actually borrow one of those gowns since they hung on me like a puddled curtain. I also was drawn to her off-limits, pointy, size-10 pumps, dyed to match her Jacky suits.

I was the fourth child and the runt of the litter – considerably shorter and smaller than the rest. (My theory is mother smoked a few more cigs and sipped a few more martinis when she was preggers with me.) But to be fair, I’m also considering the DNA link to my small, Polish ancestors.

Cut to my gorgeous teenage daughter with a great sense of style, who caught up with me in stature a few years back. I provide her with her own little Nordstrom Rack down the hall. I take full credit for cultivating her sense of entitlement since I have been most gracious about loaning her items, and have only kvetched a few times when they weren’t returned on time. She is very responsible and that counts.

Combined, Syd and I have a substantial inventory. I’m proud to say a chunk of it is the ski apparel we share for our annual Mommy-Sydney ski weekends in Lake Tahoe.

I was glad to squeeze into a pair of my daughter’s skinny jeans for my birthday outing with friends in August, and only felt a pinch after the second drink. You dirty martini, you!

How does the sharing work? Sometimes we fall for the same cardigan and it can make more sense during hard times to buy one to share and take turns – you know, like college co-eds on a strict budget. Call it the The Daughterhood of the Traveling Pants.

I also prefer to loan rather than buy her a dress for the countless B’Nei Mitzvah parties and other events she seems to attend. If she wears something of mine, it feels like new to her, even though I’ve worn it a dozen times.

This whole lending thing is why those smart couture rental shops, like Boutiqueville in Chicago, do so well. Why own something costly when you can rent for the occasion? When the high is over you send it back. Thank you, it was a great date, but onto other matches.

I should point out it isn’t just us girls sharing the wealth. My daughter also gets warm and fuzzy about wearing her dad’s old sweaters. I seriously think it brings her closer to him in a very sweet way.

Guess teens have been burrowing in oversize wool since Ann-Margret sang “How Lovely to be a Woman” in Bye Bye Birdie. He doesn’t mind her using the old sweaters, or at least, has never complained.

I got to wondering if other kids and parents are comfortable with community closeting or if most families are fiercely territorial about their closets. It certainly requires trust and respect, and the right kind of green deodorant.

I did a bit of research online and found little has been written on the subject. Hurray for me!

But I did stumble upon an interesting post on How to Share Clothes with a Cross-Dressing Husband.

Okay, the ground rules killed me: Killed me! They included keeping his paws out of your underwear drawer, making him replace anything stretched, torn or stained, and drawing the line when it comes to your most precious blouses or skirts (i.e. the ones with price tags still attached). The helpful primer also suggested shopping together to make sure you have the same taste. Oy!

None of this would work in my marriage. My husband is a large man who prefers high-wasted, baggy slacks to hip jeans. If he were a cross-dresser, he’d still be swishing around in those Dean Martin pants.

I do like some of his Oxford shirts and could see slipping into one after a post-sex shower and cocktail in bed, but since we don’t schedule those kind of Hollywood encounters (we don’t eat Chinese out of the box either), it’s all just another fantasy, like wearing my mother’s Yves Saint Laurent caftans.

I do have friends who are married to dainty men with little feet and excellent taste, and I could see trading with one of those fellows, swapping Indian tunics and Moroccan slides for a tux and velvet slippers when those Victor-Victoria mood strikes.

Of course, the well-dressed gay husband is top drawer when it comes to swapping, assuming he would cooperate. His rules might be too stringent for even me. I sort my closet by color but not by texture and season and don’t iron a thing. Crisp is not in my vocabulary.

No, I think I’ll stick with sharing with the girls, my wonderful girls, grabbing a wrap for Lauren when leaving for a party, pulling a dress for Sydney for a Bat Mitzvah. Selecting a hand bag that works. Maybe a trinket or earrings to tie it all together.

Does sharing benefit my daughters more than me? Well, naturally. It goes with the territory when you’re a consummate stylist and mother – who still misses dressing her dolls.

This is the sixth installment in Luanne’s column, Life in the Green Lane.

Main Image: In Style

Image One: Luanne Bradley

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

Is it possible to make great California wine in an unfriendly environment? Not according to Hall St. Helena, the first winery in California to achieve Gold LEED Certification.

LEED is an internationally-recognized green rating system that measures how well a building or community does in its efforts to save energy and water, reduce CO2 emissions, improve environmental quality and show leadership in the stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts.

Hall won the prestigious award from the U.S. Green Building Council for its sustainable design and practices at its facility in Napa Valley. Among the features recognized:

• Radiant Floors Allowing for Precision Winemaking and Maximum Energy Efficiency:

Radiant flooring allows HALL to control the facility’s temperature while conserving energy. This technology, accomplished by running cold or warm water through the floor slab, provides a energy efficient and stable storage and production environment.

• Solar Energy:

The sun provides more than 35 percent of the energy needed to power HALL St. Helena. Solar photovoltaic cells (solar panels) on the roof tops of the barrel cellar and fermentation building convert sunlight directly into electricity. Approximately 42,000 square feet of solar panels span the St. Helena winery roofs.

• Local Building Materials:

More than 10 percent of materials used to build the facility were extracted, harvested or recovered, as well as manufactured, within 500 miles of the project site.

• Recycled Building Materials:

More than 10 percent of the materials used were made with recycled content.

• Water Conservation:

Drought-tolerant plant species were selected for the winery landscaping which will reduce the demand for irrigation by more than 50 percent. In conjunction with this, all of the landscaping and vineyards are irrigated with recycled water. A 40-percent reduction of building water has also been achieved through the use of low-flow water outlets without compromising performance.

Cheers to Hall and its owners, Craig and Kathryn Hall for achieving their vision.  To celebrate this accomplishment, HALL is offering complimentary LEED tours daily at 11am through the end of August. Call 707.967.2626 to reserve your spot.

If killing trees is murder, we need a darn good reason to commit the act.

In truth, it is very challenging to morph into a pulp-free society -  one that celebrates without greeting cards and wrapping paper, communicates without monthly statements and markets without catalogs. And there is nothing like holding a tactile piece of newsprint in your hands to stay informed.

Here are some, but not all, reasons for and against ending our paper chase:

Good uses of a paper

1. Love Letters

Image: Mark Hillary

Romantic missives are simply warmer when penned by hand on recycled notepaper, a cocktail napkin, the back of a Southwest Airlines ticket folder, anything but e-mail. Electronic personals can feel disingenuous. When my dad died a couple of years ago, my mom brought out a stack of letters and poetry she had inspired in him. My children hold dear the letters they receive from loved ones at summer camp and store them in their treasure boxes. Need help composing an old-fashioned love letter? Check out Write Express for unblocking your deep, profound and horny (whoops, I mean desirous) sentiments.

2. The Daily News

Image: Matt Callow

As a graduate journalism student at the Medill School at Northwestern U, we were coaxed into the broadcast program by the faculty’s admonishment “print is dead.” Well, it is in a terminal state as many major dailies fold, but the industry is still kicking. Most of my cronies are New York Times die-hards, still quoting sections of the feature pages at dinner. True, the web is a vital source of news and information, but it will be a sad day when the presses stop running for good.

3. Bathroom

As far as I can tell, there is still no better alternative on the market than recycled toilet and tissue paper. Just wish they could make a green one that is soft. We’re not baboons, you know. Well, at least most of us.

4. Photographs

Image: Luanne Bradley

True, we could manage to print out fewer of them, but photos are archival art most of us can afford. Anyone still buying costly original art during the recession must be in the military business. But a photo wall  – now that’s doable for the thrifty eco set. While most of us store our pictures in our document folders, we tend to print the ones that have the most meaning or tell the story of our past. I cannot live without them, except of course for the ones that make me look old and fat.

5. Fiction

There’s nothing stranger than reading moving fiction, like The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, on a small screen. I admit ebooks from vendors like Books on Board are a helpful adjunct to bulky books when traveling and avid readers can download dozens to peruse all summer long. But the concept of “pleasure reading” denotes taking the time to immerse one’s self in another place and time. It is difficult to become an armchair traveler when the arms are connected to a task chair. Again, it’s the tactile pleasure of making friends with your novel and lovingly embracing it, turning and folding its pages and coming back to it for more pleasure when you desire it.

Bad uses of Paper

1.  Disposable Paper Goods

Everything from paper plates and cups to paper napkins, towels and trays should be banned. If you must use disposables, we now have biodegradable serving dishes made from corn starch and other materials like bagasse (above), which is residual sugarcane fiber leftover from juice extraction. The plates are soak proof, have no plastic or wax lining applied and can be used for both hot and cold items. You can get them at World Centric and other sites. In terms of napkins, switch to cloth. You can wash and dry them in cold water to save energy and keep using them for years. One of my kids does art on gently used paper napkins, but in most cases, they are simply tossed out, and that makes me sad.

2. Catalogs

Don’t just recycle the paper for these. Phase out printing and sending them. Neiman Marcus should be ashamed of its extravagant self. Those glossy catalogs (a.k.a. The Book) the luxury retailer persists in sending through the mail are like images of dead trees. They are ridiculous, as are all catalogs still coming through the mail, on new or recycled paper. True, the companies that have switched to recycled paper are making a better choice. Support your favorite catalog companies in their transition efforts by making purchases from their websites. The web is ideal for marketing products – time to embrace it!

3. Greeting Cards

Image: Shoebox

I’m not opposed to recycled event invitations on handmade paper because of the social tradition of marking an milestone (weddings, births, B’nei Mitzvas), although more consumers are switching to electronic invites. But when it comes to the Hallmark marketing schemes (Halloween cards on sale in September), we are wasting vast amounts of paper on cards for absurd occasions. Happy Boss day? Save us! The real pressure is Valentine’s Day. Say it with a love letter that will last. Not a card someone else wrote for you, someone weird sitting in a card-writing factory. Make your own birthday notes as works of art that can be framed. And on the holidays, if you must send a greeting, send a photo that friends will keep. Apologies to Shoebox Greetings, but I’m not sure we need shoe boxes, either.

4. Monthly Bills and Statements

Apart from cyber-challenged senior citizens, most of us can receive and pay our monthly bills online. Anyway, seniors use less paper since most of their bills have been reduced over time. The banks make it easy to do online banking so why not get this dreaded chore done quickly, the paper-free way? Even if you are a big record and file keeper, you can store your stuff on a disc. I’m so tired of the paper piles. Aren’t you? Also, there are sites like Lending Tree to guide you if you’re interested in doing online banking.

5. Homework

Image: Apdk

In my house, we call it busywork. It’s bad for our over-stressed, childhood-robbed children, and it’s bad for the planet, too. The majority of k-12 schools assign work on loose paper copied from textbooks, rather than giving children their own textbooks during the year. Waste, waste, waste. The work is done on paper (think math sheets, essays, reports, displays on poster sheets and foam core, creative projects to accompany academic learning) and you’ve got schools across the globe cranking out the paper, rather than using textbooks and computers. And don’t forget report cards, also done on paper!

Image: llimllib

Color me hydrated! Yes, these appealing fruit shades enlivening the sleek water bottles are part of KOR Water’s new Thirst for Giving™  program.

Each color is tied to a different non-profit identified by KOR as part of this environmental mission – and clever marketing campaign.

KOR will donate 1% of annual sales to organizations doing exceptional work related to the causes that KOR supports: ocean and watershed protection, the global water crisis and container recycling.

“KOR’s mission is to celebrate and protect water,” said KOR founder and CEO Eric Barnes.  “The Thirst for Giving™ Program is our way of bringing more awareness to issues that deeply impact the future of water on our planet.”

The KOR One Hydration Vessel is now available in four shades, each one representing a specific water-related cause: Blue (Ocean Protection); Fuchsia (Global Water Crisis); Green (Watershed Protection); and Orange (Container Recycling).

The Four Non-Profits selected are:

• Ocean Protection: The Algalita Marine Research Foundation
• Global Water Crisis: Blue Planet Run
• Watershed Protection:  The Wetlands Initiative
• Container Recycling: Container Recycling Institute

The Fountain Valley, Calif. company invites retailers to become partners and sell the bottles at their stores. Meantime, you can locate one of the vendors already selling the bottles ($30 at REI) by visiting the KOR Website. If the bottles take off, it could mean helpful dollars for the targeted causes, since the bottles are on the pricey side.

Consumers who have tried the bottle, made of Eastman Tritan™ copolyester, have found it to be durable with a good grip. Its design includes a hinged lid that can be opened with one hand, which comes in handy for sports like biking, and a soft rubber base with a glasslike clarity for seeing what you are drinking (we are what we drink?). The sleek design won the National Georgraphic Adventure Best of Adventure Gear Award for 2009.

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