A few days ago I had the opportunity to make a guest appearence in my daughter Tess's third grade class to talk about what we can do to reduce our ecological footprint on the Earth. (Read: stop shopping at dollar stores.) They were all eager listeners to what I had to say, but the sad part was collectively (aside from Tess) they knew almost nothing about the three R's: recycling, reducing and reusing. I spent and hour with them, starting by asking how many of them turned off the water while brushing their teeth (all of them), how many knew to turn off the lights  when leaving the room (again, everyone) and some other easy answer type eco questions. But then I asked them why they should turn off the lights. "To save electricity!" they all yelled. So, I asked them why they should save electricity? Aside from the tall, skinny eight year old whose bedroom is upstairs in my house waving her hand frantically, no one had an answer. So, I finally called on Tess, who proceeded to amaze the class (and the teacher) with her answer. "Electricity is made from gas, and gas is made from fossils and one day we're going to run out of fossils and run out of gas." (I swear we didn't practice that...)

My goal was to get them to understand the whole concept of "reduce," so I asked them if they knew where the garbage that they take to the curb goes. They knew the garbage truck came to get it, but after that, it might as well have gone to the mall for all they knew. I wasn't prepared to have to explain what a landfill was, but once I told them that just this year we were opening up 500 new holes in the ground that are the size of several football fields, I think they got the point. When I asked them what's going to happen if we keep throwing away trash, one kid finally got it. "We're going to live next to a landfill, huh?" Amen.

Stay tuned...