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Can we create eco children?


My 5yo loves to watch YouTube. (Very heavily monitored, only as a treat but still...)
What she most loves to watch is people unwrapping things and people playing with toys and demonstrating them. Judging by the amount of views and by talking to other parents this seems to be all the rage for 5 year olds. At the moment she likes to watch LOL dolls. This has of course led to 'mummy can I have an LOL doll?'.
If you have not had the misfortune to know what this is, let me describe some of the video to you. First it is covered in packaging layered round it and so you must remove some disposable plastic wrapping, then a bit more disposable plastic wrapping, then a bit more. This then leaves you with a round plastic ball. It has different sections which you can open. You open the first section and inside is some plastic packaging, which you open and there are some small plastic glasses. Then you open another section, more plastic packaging, inside some shoes. You continue to do this until you you have found all the bits for the doll. The actual doll itself is so small and tacky, you would feel hard done by if you'd got it from the pound shop. But because you open lots of disposable packaging hidden in different sections, you instead get to pay £10. Thanks Capitalism!
'mummy can I have an LOL doll?'
I shift uncomfortably, how do I say not a chance in hell?
'Well, maybe you can put it on your birthday list and maybe we can have a look on eBay?'
The best I can do is hope that she'll forget by her birthday or hope that at least buying it second hand won't be adding to the looming environmental disaster.

How do you transform a child captivated by today's market consumerism into an ethical savvy young person?

I thought back to my own experience.
When I was growing up, my parents taught me to recycle. They did this by recycling. I accompanied my mum to the bottle bank by our local Tesco and had great fun dropping the bottles in and hearing them smash. I helped stamp on aluminium cans to squash them down. I helped my dad put the food scraps into the compost bin. Then when I was older the council introduced recycling bins and we separated out our waste into those.
When I moved to Coventry the first house I rented didn't have a recycling bin. So, thinking it had been stolen, I rang the council, they hadn't introduced a recycling bin scheme yet. What not even a paper bin? No. I was at a bit of a loss, so I have to take them to the supermarket like it's the early 90s? Thankfully I did have a car to be able to do this and it wasn't too much longer that recycling bins were introduced.
At a later point I lived with a housemate who didn't recycle, I kept finding paper in the normal bin. My inner programming of always having recycled struggled to cope with this and yes I did take them out and put them in the correct bin. Don't get me wrong, I've had my laissez-faire moments of being in the town centre, having bought a plastic bottle of water (because sometimes you do forget to go prepared and sometimes I like to not die of thirst in the barren wasteland outside a pound stretcher and an O2 shop) and have tossed it carelessly into a regular bin. But there were only normal bins in the town centre whereas in my house the paper bin was just outside the door, a whole 4 feet away from the regular bin. Just....cannot.....compute.....
For me recycling was the norm, because my parents made it the norm.

So if you want children to grow up recycling, then you recycle. If you want them to buy second hand goods, then you buy second hand goods. If you want them to mend clothes rather than throw them away and buy more then this is what you must do. Be the person you want them to be.
I just hope that in our highly commercial society, that this will be enough.

Comments

  1. Great post - yes, we must lead by example. I have fortunately managed to steer Eleanor away from those YouTube videos so far but she still comes home talking about toys her friends have. To be honest I'm less subtle than you - I point out excess packaging, and I point out all the toys she already has and hardly plays with!! Not sure this is the right approach though!

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