Both my day care and personal abode have seen my attempts at being as ‘green’ as possible in recent years. It’s not that long since I was making the glorious fortnightly trip to the recycling center with my meticulously divided waste before the advent of curbside collection. My feeble attempts at preserving the environment were, I felt, the least I could do as a polluting, wasteful human.

We use various fun learning games to instil this knowledge into the kids (where does paper come from, which bin does the waste paper go into) and it is a lot easier than you might think. Children are like little sponges and they are open to new concepts and ideas. Their enthusiasm is infectious and goes a long way towards changing more rigid mindsets outside the day care – I have had quite a few parents tell how they got into trouble at home for not recycling! I love it!!

We make gentle recommendations to parents to choose products based on the recyclibility of the packaging when they send in store bought snacks. Examples might be buying certain goods in larger containers or in cardboard instead of plastic packs i.e. yogurt, raisins and recycling juice bottles. The kids get involved via an art project that incorporates pictures of more environmentally friendly containers.

Every day care owner knows how many batteries are required for all those annoying…er educational toys!! We bought a recharger, reuse our batteries and save money. If you do have a cache of old batteries lying around take them to a local battery recycling depot (there are lots around).

We can make a huge difference with a little extra thought and effort and a variety of small changes. As day care operators we have a fantastic opportunity to mould little minds, to make environmental awareness second nature to kids. We can be proud when we hear that our preschoolers are reprimanding adults on issues green!!

Fiona Lohrenz drew on her 10 years experience of running a day care to found ChildCareOnly.com and produce a 'How to Start a Day Care Business' DVD guide: www.startchildcare.com Fiona can be reached at her website: http://www.childcareonly.com