What got you interested in green living?
I have always considered myself an environmentalist, going all the way back to a club I had with my brother and sister when I was in elementary school. We used to go around and pick up trash in the neighborhood. Later I got involved in GreenPeace and helped with the recycling program at my university. Protecting the environment touches every other issue I care about: children’s health, fair labor standards, energy policy, globalisation, the quality of our food supply. It all goes back to treating the Earth with respect and reverence.
What is one easy step that moms can take to lessen our impact on the Earth?
Reduce your reliance on ultra-processed foods. These foods take a lot of energy to produce (usually more petroleum “calories” than the total number of calories in the food according to Michael Pollan!), do not contain healthy ingredients, and are cheaper to make your self. And this doesn’t have to be a daunting task. Things like making yogurt, granola, and bread are fun activities and the children can help too!
How do you help your kids understand the importance of protecting the environment?
Every minute spent with my children is ripe with teachable moments. If we’re at the park and someone is smoking, my son will comment on the smell. We talk a lot about how unhealthy cigarettes are and how they pollute the air as they’re smoked and the park as they’re tossed aside. If we’re walking and we come across trash, we talk about how important it is to clean up after ourselves. And the children are always by my side in the garden as we compost and hand-pull weeds instead of dousing everything with chemicals. I think that sort of thing just rubs off over time. When they’re bigger, it won’t even occur to them to reach for the pesticides, because they’ll already know a better way to approach the Earth and the garden.
If you could recommend one green product alternative to other moms, what would it be?
Compact Flourescent bulbs. I know everyone’s talking about this, but it is such a huge help. Mother Jones did a big report on the myth of Energy Independence this month and one of their key points was that we have to reduce our energy consumption, because there is no magic bullet fuel that’s going to replace coal and petroleum. So swap out those bulbs—they really do last forever and cut down your energy consumption a great deal. And they carry huge (and much cheaper) packs of them at Costco and other retailers now.
What are your green goals for the next year? Next decade?
We are in the process of transitioning to as much local food as possible and hope to do a full year of Colorado-grown food starting this fall. This has been an amazing journey for us because we’re actually getting to know the folks who produce our food, right down to the people who make our cheese, milk the cows for us, and grow the grain for our flour. Oh, and we’re installing a Doggie Dooley for our pet waste, which I learned about on Green Mom Finds!
In the next decade, I’m hoping to add a solar water heater kit to our house, buy a Hybrid car, install a “root cellar” in the basement to store local produce like apples, onions, potatoes, carrots, and squash into the winter so that we won’t have to buy them from Chile over the winter! I’m also hoping to continue to agitate for change on both the local and national level. Don’t forget in November that we have two candidates with very different approaches to the environment coming at a critical time for energy policy, environmental standards, and global stewardship…
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My name is Julie Artz and I live with my husband, Matt, my son, Gabriel (9/04), and daughter, Lily (5/08), in Lyons, Colorado. I’m a work-at-home communications consultant doing everything from web project management to marcomm for not-for-profit organizations. And, of course, I blog at ChezArtz.com, GreenArtz.com, and API Speaks.
