Green Moms Profile: Julie on Veganism

Green Moms Profile_ Julie on Veganism.png

Welcome to Earth Month! This month, I’m profiling a number of “green moms” who purposely live in a sustainable way.

For our third Green Mom Profile, welcome Julie. She’s in Germantown, MD, a suburb of Washington D.C. just north of where I am. She has two kids, who are one and five years old. She’s a mentor for Vegan Outreach, a group who is dedicated to reducing suffering through the promotion of a vegan diet.

Continue reading

How to Encourage Your Kids to Eat Vegetarian Meals

Want to eat vegetarian meals more often in your family but not sure how to introduce your kids to it? Check out these 9 tips!

How to Encourage Your Kids to Eat Vegetarian Meals (Photo: Pile of multi-colored peppers on a tablecloth)

“Come on, try a broccoli tree,” I say, my voice taking on the edge of a whine. My three-year-old pokes at his broccoli with a finger. Most of the time in this situation, he tries at least one. For a preschooler, that’s not too bad. While I love the health benefits of eating your vegetables, I also want to eat vegetarian more often for the sake of the environment.

Agriculture contributes to  nine percent of the greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. that cause climate change, with meat and dairy production making up a large percentage of that. In addition, many livestock farms also have negative impacts on the air and water in their local areas. Fortunately, you don’t need to go full-on vegetarian or vegan to make a difference. Not eating meat once a week – such as meatless Monday – can reduce your carbon footprint.

Since many kids are resistant to trying anything new, here are some ways we’ve found to eat vegetarian food and make it more appetizing.

Continue reading

Kid-Friendly Activities to Make Earth Day Every Day

Earth Day doesn’t need to be limited to April 22 for you or your children. You can make Earth Day everyday by trying one of these six activities that start conversations about bigger topics.

Kid-Friendly Activities to Make Earth Day Every Day (Photo: Earth from space)

“What are we going to do for Earth Day this year?” I wondered to myself. While we try to embrace a sustainable lifestyle all year long, I wanted to make Earth Day a little special. It’s one of my favorite holidays, after all!

After poking around on some local websites, I found an event at the local nature center. But if you don’t have any organizations putting on Earth Day events, there are still plenty of options. Best of all, these ideas can spark new patterns to help you make Earth Day every day.

Continue reading

Book Club: Why Richard Scarry’s Busytown Has the Worst City Government Ever

Book Club – quirky critical and social justice takes on children’s literature. Otherwise known as what happens when someone interested in pop culture and political analysis has read the same bedtime story for the 100th time.

Richard Scarry’s Busytown has the most incompetent municipal government I’ve ever seen, despite the fact that I live very close to Washington D.C. The urban planning is an utter disaster, the roads make Beijing’s highways look orderly, and the safety standards and training are non-existant. Urban designers take note – except for its astonishingly resilient citizens, Busytown is everything you don’t want your city to be.

To start with, the city’s traffic patterns and the resulting crashes are atrocious. We have two Busytown books (Cars and Trucks and Things that Go and Lowly Worm’s Applecar), both of which feature multiple car crashes or near-misses. For example, one accident involves at least 17 different vehicles, including a squirting mustard truck, a chinaware truck, a flour truck, a whipped cream truck, a tomato juice truck, and an egg truck. While thankfully, “no one was badly hurt” but it will “probably take a Million Years” for the mechanic to fix everything.

Scan from Cars and Trucks and Things that Go of a huge crash

The roads all appear to be multi-lane with no actual stripes to distinguish between them. There are few or no traffic lights or stop signs, with individual police officers directing traffic at overcrowded intersections. There are multiple turn-offs with no merge lanes, like drive through hamburger stands on busy highways. The roads appear to be constantly under construction, with minimal markings and barriers. The roads themselves go through dangerous areas with a lack of supporting infrastructure, as “shortcuts through the mountains” result in dangerous falling rocks. (The roads also appear to cut right across ski trails, which can’t be safe for the skiers.)

Beyond the physical infrastructure, there is clearly little municipal support for regulation. Enforcement of traffic rules is minimal, with one clearly dangerous driver being pursued by a single (but very determined) bike cop in one book and another completely ignored in another. Vehicles vary in size from tiny pencil cars driven by mice to huge multi-story tourist buses. Many of them appear to not pass modern safety or emissions standards, including pickle and banana cars. One even transforms into a helicopter and balloon, while having no obvious method of propulsion.

Scan from Cars and Trucks and Things that Go of a tractor that's fallen in a pond

The complete disregard for safety extends to the municipal staff, who clearly need better training and performance standards. They make the beleaguered Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority look staggeringly competent. A crane driver steers straight into a lake. (That wasn’t very smart, indeed.)

A steamroll driver loses control of his truck, which runs over several cars. A car carrier operator drops a car into the ocean. Six different dump trucks in one area dump their loads at the same time because of vague misheard directions from a citizen.

Scan from Cars and Trucks and Things that Go of cars run over

Lastly, the city is extremely auto-centric. While it’s not safe for drivers, it’s disastrous for bicyclists and pedestrians. There are sidewalks, but cars veer onto them on a regular basis, knocking over parking meters. There are no bike lanes or separated paths. There is a police officer on a bicycle, but even she rides on sidewalks to avoid the multiple crashes. Instead of bicycles, even the children are gifted toy cars that they’re allowed to drive on the road!

While Busytown looks pro-urban upon first glance, it is a classic example of a poorly planned, shoddily managed semi-suburban area. It is certainly a product of the time. Parents interested in finding good neighborhoods for their children and city planners alike can learn from this disastrous mess.