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Toddlers love causes, they love to feel helpful and they love doing what’s “right”. So it’s generally easy to recruit them into the environmental crusade. It’s true that many of the concepts are well beyond a toddler’s grasp, but early exposure to its three basic precepts – reduce, reuse, and recycle – can help make environmentally correct behavior second nature. Here are the tips for teaching toddler about environmental friendly:

Always be a model. Setting an exemplary environmental example serves two important purposes; one, it teaches your toddler to care for the earth, two, it helps ensure that there will be an Earth for your toddler.

Recycle. Put your toddler in charge of collecting recyclable plastic or paper supermarket bags and put them in the appropriate bins (not glass bottles and cans until they surely know how to handle them), and stack old magazines and newspapers. Explain that those old products can be made into new ones and they won’t fill up the garbage dumps or dirty the air when they’re burnt.

Reuse. Many everyday items can be given new life, reducing the drain of natural resources: reuse supermarket bags again and again, instead of buying new bags or use old containers and decorate them into new containers for crayons and toys. Both of you can also create some toddler’s handy crafts made of used products, such as colorful jar of plastic bottle, clay of newspaper pulp, decorations of scrap paper, etc. Explain the purpose of reusing the old materials – “Did you know that paper is made from trees? The more we use papers, the more trees would be cut down. The more we reuse papers, the more we save trees.

Reduce. The less we take from the environment, the more it will have to give us. Explain to your toddler that every time you use another bag or box or carton, it adds to the junk on the Earth and if people keep using so many “things”, there won’t be any place left to keep the trash.

Be a green consumer. When shopping, choose environmentally responsible products (Recycled and recyclable products, minimally packaged products, refills). Point out the merits of your choices to your toddler.

Create green parties. To minimize the negative impact of birthday and other children’s parties on the environment, create a party that uses many reusable products, such as colorful old tablecloths, recyclable plastic plates and cups, or old papers for the decoration. Try to spend most of your money for foods and drinks, and find something else at home for the games, decorations, goody bags, etc. Avoid throw away plastic forks and spoons or design a menu of “finger foods”.

Give a little educating. The easiest way to introduce the concept of recycle, reuse and reduce is giving some visual examples, such as first hands, books and videos. Give the illustration how we depend on nature, that we should take care of the trees, waters, and other resources. Parents can also teach toddlers about planting vegetable and fruits, where they need good soils, and healthy environment.

Make your own family compost. A family can use wasted food and yard for composting, even you only have a few window boxes, or room for a compost pile.

Teach your child’s day care or preschool. If the schools have taught toddlers some lessons about saving the earth, give more input and support, so that many toddlers (who are actually your toddler’s friends) would understand much better about the importance of saving the earth. And, later on, your toddler and friends can make “Save the Earth” project together.