I'm Stephanie Safarian and this is episode 99.

You are listening to the Sustainable Minimalist Podcast, a show about living simply and sustainably with your family.

Here's your host, Stephanie Safarian.

Hello there and welcome back.

On today's show, we are talking about how, exactly, to raise eco-conscious kids.

It's cliche, but it's true, our children are always watching.

I think most of us parents assume that because our kids are always watching us

they will just naturally pick up on our low waste or our environmental ideals.

We are leading by example every day on the big actions and the small ones, the big ones being conscious of our air travel and eating plant-based most or all of the time.

The small actions that we do each and every day might be using a rain barrel to conserve water

or repurposing old clothes into napkins and rags.

We're doing all these things day in and day out right and they're watching so

they're naturally going to be eco-conscious adults, right?

Well, it's certainly true that our children are always watching, but they're not just watching us.

They're learning from their peers.

They're learning from advertisements.

They're learning from society in general.

And what they're learning is a completely opposite message.

Now all these sources of information they send conflicting messages

and while I personally have tried my absolute darnest to raise eco-friendly daughters who are completely oblivious to the newest and the flashiest and the latest and the greatest item, I'm finding that doing so gets harder and harder as my

daughters grow up. Now here's just a real life example from yesterday. As it was time to usher my five-year-old out the door and into the

car to get to kindergarten, I noticed that she deliberately and more than once left her backpack behind with all its contents like

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