Earth Day, Every Day

"Did you enjoy your lunch today?" I ask Julia. I've been waiting for her to come home, like a puppy in the window, so I can bask in the praise of having prepared one of my finest lunches ever -- healthy and inspired, even including sliced kiwi fruit. (Her favorite!)

"It was really good, Mom. Thanks!" She says with a smile, then delivers the mommy buzz-kill of the week -- "Ms. Ockene suggested that we wash and dry sandwich baggies from now on because they're bad for the environment." Talk about hitting me where it hurts.

Lately I've been suffering from a huge case of "green guilt" over my confusion and inability to keep up with the latest ways our family can tread lightly on the planet -- or as I recently learned from Oprah, decrease the size of our "carbon footprint." Keeping up with being green, and its implications on my daily life, has left me frozen in my big ol' carbon tracks. Who knew that reducing, reusing and recycling could be so overwhelming?

So in an attempt to show our kids how important these issues are, and to make up for falling short over the last year, I decided to celebrate Earth Day as a family by beginning some greener habits and activities:

Trash Pick-Up: After school on Earth Day, Julia and Henry invite some of their friends over and we pick up trash around our house, in the neighborhood, and at our local park. I ask the kids to wear gloves to protect their hands, and we supply large trash bags that fill up shockingly fast.

Tree & Flower Planting: To commemorate the day, I buy a small new tree at a local nursery and we plant it in our yard. Then, we make tin-can herb planters. Using a screwdriver, I poke a hole in the bottom of some recycled tin cans we've collected. Then the kids paint the outside with some old paint we find in our basement. When the cans are dry, the kids fill them with pebbles and soil and plant some basil or mint.

Grocery Bag Decoration Contest: The children decorate our supply of brown grocery bags with their own Earth-Day-inspired creations, and we pledge to reuse the bags again.

A Shoe Thing: As part of the day, we ask friends and their parents to bring old sneakers to our house. We make a package to mail to Africa for the www.shoe4africa.org program.

To end the Earth day celebration on a sweet note, I make "Mother Earth Cup Cakes" -- baked in reusable silicon cups rather than disposable cupcake wrappers and frosted in green and blue frosting.

And as for the lunch baggie dilemma, I follow the advice of DreamTeamTracy -- and learn how to pack a truly "green" school lunch.

My footprints already feel lighter.