Paying it Forward...

What are our children being taught about health, safety, growth and sustainable living?

We routinely teach our children and warn them about the consequences of certain behaviours and of their responses to the behaviour of others.  Stranger danger, for example, is something we are driven to advise on, as early as our children are able to understand the ramifications of having contact with people they don’t know.  We also teach them, as soon as is practicable, about road safety; things like looking right, then left, then right again, and never assuming they are safe simply because they might be on a pedestrian crossing with the right of way.  We show them what is appropriate and safe behaviour, we point out what is risky and inappropriate, and we fight to protect them in every way we possibly can, because that is our job, both as parents and as moulders of the thinking and behaviour of coming generations. It’s the responsible, practical and nurturing thing to do.

But how many people in key positions in children’s lives (and I’m not just talking about parents) miss vital opportunities, when it comes to teaching them about personal and environmental health and responsibility?  That is equally important, as the realisation dawns that the earth’s resources are not all renewable and more must be done to ensure the planet’s long-term survival and health.  What will planet Earth look, feel, and smell like in 100 years? Will there still be forests to provide the oxygen we need to breathe clean air and to regulate the earth’s climate?  Will nature reserves still exist that haven’t been destroyed in the relentless quest for more fuel sources?  Will the water we need for survival be of good quality?  The answers to these and many more environmental and health questions largely depend on the actions taken now and in the coming years, to preserve, enhance and prolong the life of the planet and its dwellers.  It is up to the coming generations to carry that forward, and while they will have to do it out of necessity, there is an opportunity RIGHT NOW, to instil a culture of caring and passion that will ultimately act as the conduit between necessity and a true and positively felt commitment to sustaining life and health.        

Many parents involve their children in this vision for the future, and schools are certainly doing more than they ever did before, to raise awareness.  I know parents who make the weekly recycling into an instructive game that involves the children and through that process a wonderful culture of automatic and unquestioning sustainable behaviour is being well cemented. School science projects involve considerations to renewable energy sources, regeneration, and other forms of sustainable functioning that get brains thinking and creating, and education across the board is better than it has ever been before.  Many years ago, when I was at school, recycling was something only hippies did, with used rope and goat hair!  We threw away what we stopped having a use for, and lurched forward into a culture where people forgot how to fix things, opting instead for replacement at low cost.  Just one of the unhappy consequences of a whole generation who thought that way is bulging landfills full of defunct appliances and litter, leaching deadly chemicals into the earth, and plastics that don’t break down.  There are plenty more, like sea birds and other marine creatures dying from ingesting bits of plastic that condemn them to a slow death through starvation because their brains cannot differentiate between their stomachs being full of un-digestible plastic and not food. 

Collectively, as a species, we are finally learning what the bears and other, wiser beasts have always known; that you don’t defecate where you sleep.  But let’s not kid ourselves that we’re anywhere close to where we really need to be, in ensuring the ongoing life of the earth and the health of future generations.  There is still far more work to be done than we once ever dreamed would be necessary.  Currently, we’re really just teetering on the tip of a melting iceberg!

Teaching the coming generations about health and sustainability is about more than just recycling and finding new sources of clean, renewable energy.  It’s about learning to be responsible in as many areas as possible on a personal level.  My main hobbyhorse is household chemicals.  The “Roll of Shame” on my website pulls no punches about the effects of what people use to clean their own environments, but that’s deliberate.  Why dress it up?  It is what it is – a hideous and totally unnecessary dice with death for the sake of a clean oven or toilet. 

Until labelling laws change to make us aware of and capable of researching exactly what we’re hauling into our houses, we have two choices:  blind faith or responsibility.  Most thinking people would agree that blind faith can be a very dangerous thing.  It’s not a logical strategy for survival, and this is not to condemn the religious, because religious faith is an entirely different thing from relying on some money-grabbing pharmaceutical giant to convince you that what they’ve offered you to clean your house isn’t going to destroy your health or the environment you expect to continue to thrive in.  And they are money-grabbing giants.  They throw ridiculous sums of money around at different “experts” who can vouch for them, to ensure the law doesn’t turn around and expect them to start declaring what’s REALLY in those bottles of pretty coloured but potentially lethal liquid.  The warning labels on those bottles are not there for fun.  They are the minimum compliance requirement, and a tacit acknowledgement that there is potential for serious harm. Okay, in heavily diluted form, most of what’s in them is purely an irritant.  But at what point does dilution become concentration, in an already compromised waterway?  At what point does a minimal respiratory irritant become toxic to someone with an underlying respiratory impairment they may not even be aware that they have?  Asthma can be triggered at any point in a person’s life, and I have a relative who developed it very late in life simply as a result of breathing normally in a heavily polluted city, while on holiday.  Why would any of us assume that we’re any less at risk from inhaling the fumes from a so-called safe, oven cleaning aerosol?  

Blind faith doesn’t work for me, because I’ve done more than enough research to convince me that the only road to sustainable salvation is responsibility.  I’m actively encouraging others to do the same, by offering an informed choice about what to do when it comes to household cleaning.  Some may say that it’s a drop in the bucket and, prima facie, that may be the case.  But consider this – what kind of vessel would we really be looking at, if we ALL decided to go for natural alternatives to cleaning agents that strip skin, cause blindness, impair respiratory function and contribute to the pollution of our waterways?  I think we’d be looking at something a lot more substantial than a bucket with a drop in it, and THAT is where personal responsibility can start to make a significant positive change to a bigger and much more worrying picture than the microcosm of any individual family’s universe.

Because we have to start somewhere.  It’s true that on many levels we are already making progress.  Renewable energy is no longer a dream, recycling is achieving new milestones (who ever thought, ten years ago, that you could buy an item of clothing made from recycled bin bags?) and there is much being done to preserve rainforests and endangered species, find cures for diseases, produce good organic food, and find alternatives to hard chemicals in all walks of life.  So we have woken up to the fact that the human race HAS been actively sabotaging our own health and world, and that significant changes are needed.  But the coming generations have an even bigger, longer and more intense fight to face (particularly when it takes a decade or more to fully activate or implement some of the more complicated “green” initiatives) and they need all the help they can get.

Responsibility has the wonderful chance to begin at home, and continuing to educate and encourage children and young people to be more responsible about sustainability is the only realistic way forward.  But before we can be effective in teaching and encouraging others, whatever age they may be, we have to believe in the concepts ourselves.  So we have to understand and appreciate the legitimacy and effectiveness of alternative cleaning methods, for example, before we can expect our children to embrace them and take them on board. The great news is that attitudinal change is well within the grasp of most people. So if you’re already doing great and positive sustainable things, carry on, and see what else you can incorporate into your way of life that enables you to act as a role model who promotes a positive, empowering message to your family and friends.  If you have a ways to go with that, start now.  Think about what you are doing, and how children may interpret what they see you doing, and make some positive changes towards happier health, and a sustainable planet.  Exploring ways together of doing that is a powerful way of encouraging children to think about it for themselves, develop sustainability as a personal core value, come up with innovative ways to maintain health and cleanliness, recycle, regenerate, and carry that knowledge forward into careers that incorporate sustainability as a core component.  I am always excited by the thought of how creative and wonderful the future might be at the hands of the coming generations, because I’ve always been excited about young people themselves, their vision, their potential, and the power they have to shape an extraordinary future.  Why wouldn’t we all want to help them, by planting good seeds from the earliest opportunity?  What kind of legacy do we really want to leave?

For most of us, it’s too hard a stretch to imagine that any one individual can make a significant global difference by revolutionising his or her domestic cleaning habits, but that’s not enough of a reason to avoid the responsibility.  Individual behaviour is a valuable contribution, made more impactful by instilling positive and responsible habits in those who will later take on the mantle of protecting life and health. That paves the way for a revolution of the best possible kind, led by future generations who otherwise have everything still to lose after we are all long gone.