Discover the Forest Campaign

Personally, I like the forest and don’t go often enough. The US Forest Service and the Ad Council have a Public Service Announcement campaign about rediscovering the forest. The amount of time U.S. children spend outdoors has declined 50% in the past 20 years, according to the Ad Council. The Forest Service is hoping to change this startling statistic through a PSA project entitled “Where the Other You Lives” that encourages tweens and their parents to re-connect with the great outdoors.

The Forest Service and the Ad Council created a pretty cool microsite for the campaign where you can find local parks and pick up ideas on what to do on an outdoor adventure (leaf rubs, tracking animals, learning to use a compass). Take a look at Discover The Forest here.

Give Your Kid A Waste Free Lunch Kit

If you’ve ever worried about the amount of trash thrown away by your children every day from their school dinners, then the Kids Konserve reusable lunch kit might be for you.

The kit contains a reusable cotton sack (though not sure if it has your name on like my Terratotes one!), two stainless steel lunch containers, a stainless steel water bottle, a food kozy (apparently an alternative to plastic bags/wrap and foil), cloth napkin and a recycled aluminum name tag.

The kit costs $40 with other accessories available from Kids Konserve. You, of course, don’t have to buy a kit to do this, but this does at least do it all in one place with matching stuff.

Teaching Kids To Cook With Organic Ingredients

Handstand Kids cookbooks offer kids a fun, hands-on learning experience, while getting them excited about the world in which they live, and they do it with organic ingredients. Each cookbook introduces kid chefs to one country and comes with a delightful cooking accessory. The first book in this series journeys to Italy and comes complete with a chef’s hat, packaged together in a pizza box. The second, about Mexico, is in a tortilla bag along with an oven mitt, and has been named Toy Directory’s Top Toy of 2008.

As well as buying the book, there are now also Handstand Kids Cooking Classes that offer kid chefs a “hands-on, yummy cooking experience”. Each class uses organic ingredients to make healthy & delicious foods from around the world, along with holiday treats to share with the family!

If you order a cookbook in October (i.e the next couple of days – sorry about the late notice!) from the Handstand Kids website ($28) you will also receive a new eco-friendly child’s reusable shopping bag for FREE that you can use for grocery shopping (an $8 value).

For My Kids Eco Products Review

For My Kids is a company that produces cleaning and care products that are safe for your children (and for you) to use. Started by new mum/mom Christine Stewart when she was made aware of the dangers of using conventional/popual household cleaner and hand wash.

I was sent “All-Natural Alternative to Antibacterial Disinfectants”, “All-Natural Hand Wash”, “All-Natural Lip Balm”, and “All-Natural Comfrey Salve”, and for my full review, see Green Guys Global. Suffice to say the products were great, contain natural and organic ingredients and are certainly a refreshing change from the hazardous chemicals that a lot of popular products contain. They range from $4.59 so are pretty inexpensive, so take a look at my full review and For My Kids .

For some other eco-friendly alternatives to household cleaners, see our eco reviews page, that has a cleaning section.