Not every toy my kids have is eco-friendly, although we try much harder now to make very conscious decisions about what we (and what we can influence) other people to buy for them. As they get older, the gadgety stuff is tougher to get away from, but for things like art products, blocks, dolls and more, there couldn’t be a better time to be a kid these days!

For battery operated toys, rechargeable batteries are green in more ways than one. First, you’ll save a ton of green by providing reusable batteries instead of disposable. You can use them in anything requiring batteries, from handheld video games to flashlights to the new talking doll that totally creeps you out. Rechargeable batteries come in alkaline form, lithium ion (LI-ion) or Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH). There are differences with these, including price, charging speed and what kind of products the batteries work well in. Green batteries is a great place to start researching batteries and chargers. You can also check out this article from MetaEfficient, about the best rechargeable batteries for 2008.

Now you have no excuse to “forget” to replace the batteries in the obnoxiously loud toy your kids cried about for a year! Happy shopping!

So you’re ready to put that old clunker in your driveway out to pasture. Maybe selling or junking your old car isn’t the best answer. Why not consider donation?

Perhaps it’s time for a newer, more fuel efficient car. Maybe you’ve had your eye on one of those fancy hybrids. Or maybe you’re in a position to take the big green plunge and embrace mass-transit or bicycle commuting.

Out with the old

In any case, something has to be done with Old Reliable. The conventional answer is to trade it in. But no matter how the paperwork gets structured, most car dealers aren’t really giving you what your trade-in is worth: after all, they’re in business to turn a profit.

You could literally recycle your vehicle, selling it for scrap. Most of its components and materials will eventually find their way back into the consumer stream. Or you can recycle your old car in a very productive way — by donating it to a worthy charity or nonprofit group.

Why donate?

Nonprofits have made a big investment in vehicle donation. It provides a very real non-traditional revenue stream for organizations who are used to operating on slim budgets. Donation saves the owner the cost of towing or sale, while often providing a degree of tax benefits. Many local public radio stations have vehicle donation programs, as do a broad array of well-known, well-run national organizations. There are also umbrella programs which represent groups of like-thinking nonprofits.

One such organization is Earth Share, a network of America’s leading environmental and conservation groups. Earth Share’s members include Friends of the Earth, the National Audubon Society, the National Wildlife Federation, the Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club, and a host of other front-line champions of the environmental movement.

Free pick-up

Earth Share’s vehicle donation program is well-organized: you fill out a form describing your vehicle; it’s reviewed by Earth Share; and if they agree to take your car, it will be picked up in about three business days. They can handle all fifty states, and there’s no cost to you.

Programs like this give you a chance to clear your driveway and support some of the groups you love. There are plenty of others — do a web search for “car donation” and you’ll find a big selection of groups happy to take a salable vehicle off your hands.

One caveat

In the United States, tax laws concerning vehicle donation were tightened in 2005. Before attempting to claim a donated car as a tax deduction, check the current rules or consult a tax professional. In most cases, you’re allowed to deduct the “fair market value” of the car. That’s not the same as the Blue Book value. Your vehicle may list at $1500, but if the charity only gets $200 at auction, that’s all you get to deduct.

You’ve still converted a liability to an asset, and helped a worthy cause at the same time. So put that old clunker back into the system, and smile knowing you have done some good.

Do you really want to green your home? You can’t do it alone. Here’s how to get the sort of family buy-in you need to make it work.

You have lots of free time, right? Of course not. Life is busy and getting busier all the time. And let’s face it: when it comes to squeezing in grocery shopping, getting the laundry done, and dreaming up ideas to green the planet, we all know which to-do item is going to get pushed to the bottom of your list.

Which is why if you feel like the Green Lone Ranger, you may be going about things the wrong way. Going green as a family — especially if you have kids — should be a group activity. One way to get the ball rolling is by forming a family green committee.

So grab a big bowl of organic popcorn; a couple of post-consumer, recycled notepads; and call the gang together. Let’s turn your family into a self-starting green machine.

Buy-in equals progress

Just as democratic government is derived from the consent of the people, real green change requires buy-in from everyone — even if we’re talking about a single household. You’ll never get the kids to turn off unused lights if they don’t think it’s important. And if they’re not minding the power bill, forget about getting everyone to separate their trash for recycling.

In our article How to Green Your 21st Century Business we discussed the importance of multi-departmental green committees in the workplace. These same principles apply at home. If you can get everyone contributing to the idea of a more efficient, less resource-hungry home, you’ll not only improve participation — you’re likely to discover solutions which might evade one person’s own observation.

Make a plan

You can conduct you family meeting just as you would at work. Start by prioritizing some broad areas of discussion. Ten possibilities:

• Energy use
• Laundry
• The kitchen
• A “greener” yard
• Recycling
• Safer household cleaners
• Using less gasoline
• Heating and cooling
• Water conservation
• Family meals

Jot your favorites on a set of index cards. Agree on some fixed period of time — ten minutes per topic, maybe — and start brainstorming.

Everyone is an “idea man”

Using a whiteboard or a sheet of paper for each topic, write down every suggestion. Adopt a “no bad idea” policy: everything goes to paper at this stage without discussion. Try not to let people filter each other’s contributions. Once the ideas slow down, move to the next card and a clean whiteboard.

This phase shouldn’t last more than 20 or 30 minutes. When you get to that point, stop. Now comes the business part. Bring out your whiteboards, one by one, and try to arrive at a single action item from each. Combine similar suggestions, talk things out, and move the most practical, highest-yield ideas to the top of the page. Then take a vote.

Write down your goals

As you come up with your winning ideas, assign family members to each task. This is a family, not a boardroom, so the object is to create a sense of ownership, rather than a system of accountability. Discuss how your action items will get done. As you build these mini-plans, transfer them to a master sheet. This will get posted in one or more locations around the home.

Commit to the next step

The final thing you should do is schedule the next family meeting. It could be a week or a month, depending on how much you’ve decided to start doing and your family’s enthusiasm. At your next meeting, review progress on your first batch of items and brainstorm a few more.

Never toss your whiteboards: they’re a great place to start the next time the topics are addressed. It also reinforces the idea that everyone’s opinions matter. This is team building, even if the youngest members don’t have all their permanent teeth yet. Have fun.

Do you have a tip for greening the family? Has something worked well for you? Please share in our Comments section!

There’s no need to waste paper on holiday cards. With nearly everyone having email access these days, eCards are an eco-friendly way to send season’s greetings.

Have you mailed your holiday cards yet? No? You’re not alone. Holiday greeting cards have followed the general decline of written personal correspondence. From an environmental perspective, that’s not necessarily bad news. But there’s something nice about reaching out to from distant friends and family members around the holidays.

Which is where eCards can come in handy. No paper; no wasteful shipping — and you can leave them until the last minute without feeling guilty.

Not all electronic greeting cards are created equal. There’s no shortage a free cards, and some of them look great. But there’s nothing festive about exposing your card’s recipient to a site full of tacky ads or dubious email privacy policies. Do your homework when choosing an eCard vendor, and consider some of the paid services.

Hallmark has a quality mix of free and paid eCards. Blue Mountain, offers a $15.99 one-year eCard membership program and has a clear privacy and anti-phishing policy. Looking for a nature-themed card? Check out the Nature Conservancy’s free eco-greetings, with many outdoor images supplied by its members.

So start typing. At least you won’t have to lick the stamps.

I’ve always thought of life as a spiraling staircase, gracefully wrapping around time and achievement, as opposed to the blunt vertical found on a ladder. Comparing life’s ascension to a set of stairs is often apt, but there are moments when life as ladder is far more fitting, such as when we find ourselves stuck between rungs, mired in the middle of old pattern and new performance. This is when the decisive climb from one rung to the next must begin so that we may climb toward our tomorrow, while leaving yesterday behind.

Steps may be clambered in tandem (my wife and I often fall into reflexive harmony when we find ourselves on stairs together), but climbing a ladder is a solitary endeavor. We begin at the bottom, then spend our lifetimes reaching for the top, each rung pulling us closer to dusk and further from dawn. Destinations are determined by our daily decisions, as is our grasp and the speed of our climb.

Each of us finds ourselves at some point stuck between the rungs, pinned at an impasse. Perhaps success has halted, and our growth is no longer happening at the rate it once was. We can wrap our hands around the rung above, but we do not have the strength to pull ourselves upward. Often, it is the rung just below that is holding us hostage with insubordinate habit. It is then when we must lower our heel, shatter the habits to bits, and then continue to climb without looking behind.

It is never too late to learn a new habit; never to early to shed the old like dead, useless skin. Bad habits are formed by the slow and steady accumulation of mindless minutes. As a million years of rainfall will smooth the slope of a mountain summit, so do a million misplaced moments warp our good intentions.

We all are capable of reverse engineering our own bad behavior, but we cannot unlock the door without looking for the key.

We can start by searching for the reason in our routine. Understanding why we do something is an excellent precursor to halting the undesirable. If a bad habit is built by a sequence of negative actions, then a good habit can be formed by stringing opposite elements in an opposing direction.

New habits are most difficult at their birth. The links of our new chain are frail, and barely strong enough to hold their weight, but every moment of determination thickens our resolve.

For the last three years, I’ve run a preschool with my wife. Recently, I sailed the seas to full time writer. The needs of a cadre of kiddies are nowhere close to those of the online world, and adjustments needed to be made.

At first, it was easy to allow my old habits to swallow me. It would have been simple to swear I was doing my best, but I wasn’t. The whisper was there, and I rarely commanded his  silence. You know the voice, we all have one. Mine tells me to check my email, or my analytics… or my email (it’s been five minutes after all). Telling myself I could do better wasn’t enough. I needed to reach for the rung, and pull with all my might.

I could tell you that I used the mute on my computer to silence the song of my inbox, or preach the pluses of using pen and paper, but ultimately it doesn’t matter. Not one single bit. What worked for me may not work for you. I’ve read enough tips to know. I don’t need a “How To,” I need a “Why Should I.”

It is the universal thread that’s important - our need to change, and desire to do so. When want meets willing, there is no limit to how high we can climb.

Read more from Sean Platt at his blog, Writer Dad, or subscribe to his feed.

While letter-writing has been largely replaced by email for daily correspondence, it still has its uses. Here’s how a traditional letter can help green the planet.

Want to have some personal impact on the kind of issues that will make the world a greener place? Write a letter. Not just any letter: the dead tree kind. Email is a great tool for brief personal and business communication. But when it comes to influencing opinion leaders, there’s no substitute for a well-considered, old school paper letter.

Think about your own inbox. It’s probably jammed with more than you can manage — not to mention a heaping helping of spam. Now multiply that bulk by a thousand (or many thousands), and you’ll understand why top-ranking business and government officials rarely see more than a staff-collated summary of public email.

Whether your interest is climate change, recycling, or getting your neighborhood store to stock more locally grown produce, a traditional letter is often the best way to get your words on someone’s desk. And there are three kinds of letters you can write today that can really make a difference. So warm up your favorite word processor or get out a nice box of stationery, and let’s start changing the world.

Write a Public Official

Public policy — in theory, at least — starts with the public. That’s you. While it often seems that elected officials have their own agendas, most post real attention to thoughtful communication by the people they represent.

Email is so dominated by special interest campaigns that it’s mostly regarded as a sign of a group’s organizational strength, rather than personal communication. Cut through the clutter with something which won’t be mistaken for a form letter.

The most important thing is to contact the right person: your particular Congressman, MP, Governor, or Mayor. It’s less effective to address lawmakers from outside your own district.

A few things to keep in mind as you’re writing:

• Clearly identify yourself as a constituent.
• Qualify yourself — state your background or interest in the issue at hand.
• Politeness matters.
• If you’re writing about a piece of legislation, identify the bill by number.
• Request one specific action per letter.
• A single typewritten page is enough.
• If your letter is handwritten, be sure it’s legible.
• Always sign your letters.

One further note: letters to elected officials may become part of the public record. This means any personal information — including things such as phone numbers — might become available for general inspection. Protect your privacy accordingly.

Write a Letter to a Business or Corporation

Let’s single out Wal-Mart for a moment — the United States’ biggest retailer, and one of the world’s 20 largest corporations.

Regardless what you think of their policies or impact on local retail communities, getting an entity like Wal-Mart to make even a tiny change to improve the environment or reduce resource consumption can have an even more dramatic impact than legislation or regulatory oversight.

And there’s no reason not to go straight to the top. See if the company you’re writing is listed at Yahoo Finance.  If they’re a publicly held company, you can find their key officers by doing a symbol lookup on Yahoo’s ticker section. Otherwise, check their website for the name of the owner or chief executive.

The same general rules which guide your conversation with elected officials will apply to dealing with businesses. Customers are a corporation’s constituents, so introduce yourself by saying where you shop or how you do business with the company.

Be specific, and make one actionable suggestion per letter. Try to put yourself in the company’s place: How will whatever you are asking effect the bottom line? Are there examples of similar companies which have taken the course of action you are recommending? How will being more Earth-friendly return value to the company’s customers and investors?

One of the biggest difference between today’s environmental movement and that of 10 or 20 years ago is that greens now recognize business can be partners in positive change, rather than adversaries. Companies can act thoughtlessly. But they can just as easily become allies. Remember that the officer you are writing may one day be an environmental colleague.

Write a Letter to the Editor

Newspapers are in trouble. Almost across the board, circulation and advertising are in a historic decline.

But it’s a mistake to dismiss newspapers as a public forum. Their readership is well-read and disproportionately influential. You’ll also be reaching a lot of people who simply prefer to get their news from something they can hold in their hand, rather than a screen.

The key to writing a good letter to the editor is brevity. Do your homework: most papers publish their requirements for letters, and you should be familiar with these. You’ll usually find them somewhere on the Editorial page.

Construct your letter in the same way newspaper stories are written — with the most important facts right up front. Think of your first paragraph as a summary of the whole letter, then make your case in three main thoughts or less. Don’t be shy about plugging a relevant website, meeting, or event.

One more thing: There’s something about a letter to the editor which seems to compel people to sound as if they’re making a speech before the local Rotary Club. By all means, write in normal, conversational tone. If you find yourself using a lot of overly formal words like “populace,” take a deep breath, think how you’d communicate the same thought to a friend over coffee, and start over. Your readers will thank you.

Three different kinds of letters — three ways you can help save the planet. Revive the vanishing art of written correspondence, and you’re well on the way to establishing a personal influence which will extend far beyond your desk or kitchen table.

I was sent a LeapFrog Tag ages ago, when my family took a lovely, ten hour roadtrip to South Carolina. I hid it for most of the trip, since I didn’t want to deal with the girls fighting over it. I had originally wanted to test it out with my now six-year old, since the books I had for the Tag were pre-reading and more her speed. Of course, she loved it, and much to my surprise, found myself buying a second one for my three-year old…

Let me backtrack - the LeapFrog Tag is one of the hot, new items LeapFrog has recently rolled out. They’ve seriously done their homework! The way I’ve been describing the Tag is, it’s like a chunky, digital pen (the official term is “talk-and-touch reading device”). Special Tag-related books include everything from Dora to Dr. Seuss to one of our new faves, Olivia, and are “read ” through the Tag after a bit of modern magic. Install the Tag’s included CD, and download the contents of your books onto the Tag (the Tag holds up to five books at a time). Once the book is downloaded, and as soon as you touch the Tag to the book, the real magic happens! Kids can choose to have the story read to them, plus they can press the point of the Tag onto just about anything on the page to hear sound effects or other fun extras to embellish the story. There are also games included in many of the titles. All are educational, fun and completely absorbing for kids. I mean it, I can’t tell you enough how easy and exceptionally entertaining the Tag is!

Another aspect of the Tag I fell in love with is the Learning Path system, a free online tool which allows you to see what your child is working on with their Tag (and other new LeapFrog toys as well). Just set up an account, plug in the Tag often, and the Learning Path will give you detailed information on particular skills engaged and progress made. Kids can also unlock “rewards” see how they’re learning without even knowing it!

I am beyond excited to offer a Tag for one lucky winner, as well as two Tag titles - Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin (a real belly-laugher in our house) and The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss! You won’t be disappointed, I promise. So, the rules are: Please leave a comment at this post by next Sunday night at midnight, PST with an answer to this: What do you think will be your child’s (or any Tag recipient’s) favorite Tag book? Please, one comment per person! One winner will be chosen at random. This contest is available to US residents only. Good luck!