Environmental Awareness: How to Educate the Younger Generation

With classes, quizzes, extracurricular activities, and much more, being eco-friendly is nowhere in the to-do list of teens. This is where you, the parents, need to step in. Raising environmental awareness among kids is not as challenging as it sounds. All you need to do is think out of the box instead of relying on boring lectures. Here are some creative ways for encouraging teens to save the environment.

Celebrate a Recycling Day

Giving long lectures on saving the environment might not work as kids are more likely to get bored. So skip this method and try to find a fun and adventure way for making kids realize just how important, beneficial and exciting it is to save the environment. For instance, you can celebrate a recycling day to develop the habit of recycling unwanted items into useful products. In order to add more excitement, announce a surprise gift for the family member who comes up with the best recycled product. The idea is not only to reuse the unwanted items, but also to make kids realize how interesting it is to create something from scratch. The whole process will also arouse their creativity.

Go Green by Growing Green

Another great way for encouraging teens to save the environment is growing plants and asking kids to help you in taking care of them. They may not find it exciting at the start, but they will eventually develop an interest in it. If you already have a garden, then great. Otherwise, you can make one. If your home is too small to have a garden, then buying only a few plants would suffice too. Aside from involving your kids in taking care of the plants, you can also ask them to give their opinion on which types of plants to grow, what to do with them once they’ve grown up, how to use them to improve the aesthetics of the house, etc. The idea is to get them really involved in the whole activity instead of making it look like a chore.

Encourage Teens to Conserve Resources

Create a family challenge to conserve resources as much as possible. Appreciate kids on doing little things like taking shorter showers, switching off lights before leaving the room, using refillable drinking bottles, etc. In addition to encouraging kids to conserve resources, your goal should be to teach them to follow the rule of “using less and reusing more”.

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