The Real Earth Mother

My experiments in green parenting

by CORI HOWARD

Here’s my confession: I never used cloth diapers. My backyard is littered with plastic toys. I buy juice boxes and sandwich bags. I drive my son to school in the morning, even though it’s only blocks away. I use environmentally unsound laundry detergent and household cleaners, mostly because I just haven’t gotten around to changing that bad habit.

I am, much to my horror, the anti-Earth mother. But that’s not how I want things to be. Every time I throw away a dirty sandwich bag instead of washing and reusing it, I’m plagued by guilt. The road to being a brown parent is just so much easier than the one to being green.

I want to be a greener parent. But is it even possible, in a culture that has turned babies into fashion accessories, and mothers into the hottest marketing demographic since teenagers?

Everywhere I turn, I see a new company marketing something to moms: the latest $1,200 stroller, the ergonomically designed baby sling, the designer cribs, the brand-name clothes. It’s endless and very irritating. And yet, I want that $1,200 stroller.

Faced with the onslaught of a multi-million dollar marketing machine, I ask myself: is it possible to have the stroller and still be green? Is it possible to be an Earth mother in this culture? Am I willing to make the kinds of sacrifices that would be required to be truly and sincerely environmentally conscious, and to model that behaviour to my children?

It’s hard to be a good parent, let alone a green one. In the swirling chaos of everyday life as a working mom, I often find it easier to make the convenient choice—which is rarely the ecological choice.

I wouldn’t, for example, commit to going diaper-free, as a renowned woman on Salt Spring Island has been advocating. First, I wouldn’t want to stay home all day, holding a baby over the sink. Second, as a working mom, it’s just unrealistic that I would have the time, energy, or interest in that kind of training.

Perhaps it would be better to listen to Adria Vasil, author of the bestselling book Ecoholic. She suggests “kicking the addiction to disposables, [or] at least switch to greener brands.” But that costs more money, and money is something that not every parent has.

Annemarie Tempelman-Kluit is a Vancouver mother who runs the daily e-mail newsletter

yoyomama.ca, which has a regular “green” section. She says it’s expensive to go “hard-core green and buy only organic food and wooden toys.”

Then there’s the issue of parental cooperation. Tempelman-Kluit says she and her partner aren’t exactly on the same page when it comes to the environment. “He’s just not as interested,” she says. Still, she does her part. She uses non-toxic cleaning products and tries to steer her friends and family away from plastic presents.

So does Coquitlam mother Rebecca Lyne. Lyne started the online group Green Mamas (greenmamas@gmail.com), and agrees plastic toys are a big obstacle.

“My family doesn’t get it,” she says. “But what are you supposed to do when someone gives you something plastic? Give it back?”

Adria Vasil also recognizes the plastic parenting problem. “Don’t even get me started on all the freakin’ packaging that quadruples the size of the actual toy and ends up in landfills, a serious problem when you realize that Canadians spend just over $1.4 billion on toys annually,” she writes.

On my own plastic purge, I will admit to total failure. A few months ago, I tried to get rid of most of our plastic toys. I say “most” because if I said all, I would be a liar and my kids would hate me—and where’s the good in that?

I rallied my troops, explained our mission, and surveyed our backyard. It was disgusting. There was—and I’m not kidding—a plastic dollhouse, a plastic globe, a plastic Lego robot, plastic Superman boxing gloves, a plastic purse and a plastic cash register with a plastic basket of plastic fruit, a broken plastic wagon, a plastic car, a plastic slide, a plastic croquet set, a plastic truck, a plastic table, and 100 plastic balls.

By the time I started making my pile of plastic toys to give to charity or—in the case of the broken ones—throw away, my kids had lost interest. My pile is now sitting in the alley—testament to my failure as a green parent.

On the subject of garbage, I will admit to being a colossal failure in this department as well. For months, I have been meaning to get a composter, but I’ve been so busy with work. I have this new book out and my husband needs help with his new business, and the kids are busy with school and soccer and dance classes.

It seems there’s only so much a busy urban parent can do to be green without going crazy. I don’t want to be too hard on myself. I’m still a newcomer to parenthood, let alone green parenthood. And if I don’t take baby steps, I won’t get anywhere.

For now, I’m working on the issue of goody bags. Do I go to the dollar store and shell out $50 for a bunch of plastic, made-in-China crap that will break by the end of the day? Or do I, as one magazine recently suggested, offer a green goody bag, with things like “soy nuts, dried fruit, non-toxic bubble solution, [and] flower seeds, all wrapped in a square of burlap and tied with raffia”? Now what kid would want that?

Just before my son’s birthday party this year, I took my $50 and made a donation to Free the Children. My son and I printed out cards that explained why a goat is useful to a family in Africa and better for the planet than a handful of plastic water guns and candy. He didn’t complain. He was too busy opening the wrapping and boxes—and boxes and boxes—of Lego and Bionicles and other wanted (and unwanted) plastic gifts.

Cori Howard is the editor of Between Interruptions: Thirty Women Tell the Truth about Motherhood. She is still struggling to convince her kids that wooden toys and marbles are way better than the cheap plastic toys at the dollar store.

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