I’ve cited Patagonia many times as an example of a company that gets a lot of things right. Social responsibility is part of its DNA and has been from the very beginning. I was very intersted to learn about some of the initiatives under Marcario’s leadership, and particularly the open embrace of political activism.
We still have a long way to go on eco-friendly packaging. I just finished a box of crackers. I washed out the plastic tray and will add it to the plastics recycling bag when it dries, put the box in the paper recycling bin, and threw away the shrink-wrap around the tray in the actual trash.
Excess packaging: cracker box, tray, and inner shrink-wrap. Photo by Shel Horowitz
Most people won’t bother to do all this. Designers: this is a profit opportunity for you: create packaging that people only have to put in one place when it’s over, and that can be repurposed later–and remember that today’s compostable “solution” is only an alternative if people have access to an industrial compost facility. Most people don’t.
And businesses: as you adopt truly eco-friendly packaging, you’ve got a branding and marketing opportunity.
50 years ago today, Earth Day was launched as a one-time event. Who would know it would not only become annual but turn into a massive worldwide movement that has changed our world for the better in so many ways?
Photo by Stephanie Hofschlaeger
The Environmental Movement is Now Mainstream
Since that first Earth Day, we’ve made a lot of progress. A few examples:
Public awareness of climate issues–and of the lifestyle changes we can make to improve things–is at an all-time high
Millions of people have taken to the streets to demand action on climate
Science has made huge strides in areas ranging from green energy to biomimicry; amazing new green technologies are constantly becoming more efficient, less expensive, and more deployable
Many countries have shifted away from fossil and nuclear toward clean technoogies such as solar, wind, and hydro–and these technologies are much more efficient than they were 50 years ago
Veganism and vegetarianism (two of the easiest ways to reduce our personal climate footprint) are far more accepted, even in places like Germany that used to be quite hostile)
From bringing our own reusable bags (pre-COVID) to discovering foods like tofu, the way we shop and eat has drastically shifted, even for those still eating meat
Nearly every country in the world agreed to the Paris Climate Accord (which doesn’t go nearly far enough, and which the current US administration has pledged to leave–but it’s a start)
A 16-year-old Swedish climate activist addressed the UN, arriving in the US aboard a green-energy boat (yes, I’m talking about Greta Thunberg)
Almost every major company has at least a sustainability coordinator, if not a whole department–and these folks have drastically reduced the negative impact of business on the environment
Here in the US, the well-thought-out Green New Deal is getting serious attention
We’re beginning to recognize climate justice: looking at the environment from a lens that includes economic and social justice issues, such as why so many polluting plants are in poor communities and why so many of those communities are “food deserts” with little or no access to healthy foods
My Environmental Journey Started That Day
I was 13, and I was one of the people “captured” by that first Earth Day. Ever since then, I’ve given a lot of thought to, and taken a lot of action on, ways I can live more lightly–and how I can help others, both individuals and institutions, make that shift.
This has taken many forms, from street activism to lobbying to addressing business audiences with messages on how to make green social entrepreneurship sexy and profitable to writing books that show how this can be done.
I’ve also made many lifestyle shifts, from biking 5 miles to high school at age 15 and becoming vegetarian at 16 to converting my house to a heat and hot water system using cow poop and food waste from our farmer neighbors at age 61 and carting unbagged groceries out to the reusable bags I keep in the car at 63 (since we can’t bring them into the stores anymore).
In my activist life, I’ve been lucky to participate in three major environmental victories:
In 1977, I was one of about 2,000 people and 1414 who got arrested at the construction site of the Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire. We had no way of knowing that our action would birth a national safe energy movement. On the 40th anniversary, I wrote about why this action was so important. (The link is to Part 1 of my 5-part series. There’s a link to the next installment at the bottom of each earlier one.)
In 1984, I worked with my city counselor to get the first nonsmokers’ rights regulations in Northampton, Massachusetts. Very few communities had any protection for non-smokers at that time. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that within a few years, most restaurants in town were non-smoking and that the number of restaurants in town increased significantly.
And in 1999, I founded and became the public face of the movement that saved a mountain right near my house.
It was the success of Save the Mountain that led me into the work of educating the business community on how to be profitable while saving the world.
This is not new. Social impact companies have been around at least since the mid-19th century, but it’s been on the fringe. Believe it or not, UK chocolate giant Cadbury was founded as a social impact company. But I think now we have the chance to change the entire business culture, so profitable business social and environmental responsibility becomes mainstream.
But There’s Still Lots to Be Done!
For all its positive presence, business is still a long way from solving problems it largely created. Pollution, resource depletion, and labor issues are just a few of many issues that need to be addressed, especially as world population grows faster than at any time in history. And governments are not always our allies. The present Brazilian and US federal governments, for instance, are actively sabotaging the eco-agenda. Each of us needs to make the difference we can make–and each of us CAN find a way to make that difference (contact me if you want help figuring out what the most impactful way for you and your business).
No Cost Resources and MY Gift to Help You Celebrate Earth Day THIS Year
Let’s start this Earth Day party off with something that will help you save energy, water, and money–my ebook, Painless Green: 111 Tips to Help the Environment, Lower Your Carbon Footprint, Cut Your Budget, and Improve Your Quality of Life—With No Negative Impact on Your Lifestyle. I normally sell this for $9.95, but as my Earth Day gift to you, you can get it at no cost. Just visit PainlessGreenBook.com and enter “earthdayblog” in the code box. This will also sign you up to my informative Clean and Green Club monthly newsletter.
Our national museum, the Smithsonian Institution, has organized an online Earth Optimism Summit with a fantastic lineup including Denis Hayes, who organized that 1970 Earth Day…Christiana Figueres, top negotiator of the Paris Accords…NASA’s former Chief Scientist and current director of the National Air And Space Museum Ellen Stofan…Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org (among many others)
Another national virtual summit, Earthday Live 2020, offers three days of programming and a strong social justice focus.
A group based near me in Western Massachusetts, Climate Action Now, offers several Earth Day events starting this evening with a 6:30 ET panel of legislators and activists. This may be especially interest if you live in Massachusetts, but it’s virtual and open to all.
There’s plenty in those three articles that absolutely makes sense in today’s world–but there’s also quite a bit that’s at least temporarily obsolete.
With tips about how to bring reusable containers into the stores and organizing used clothing sharing events, it made me nostalgic for that very recent time before everything changed. And with a strong focus on combining climate, waste, and social justice, it was a refreshing reminder at how much more aware even we green folks are than most of us were 20 or 30 years ago.
True, it’s a bit more challenging to maintain a green lifestyle these days. But for the planet, it’s been a chance to recharge. The enormous reduction in motor vehicles on the road, planes in the sky, and factories running at full capacity allows our air and water to clean and regenerate themselves. And not to be Malthusian (and certainly not that I think this is a good thing), but the massive wave of deaths does reduce strain on the earth’s resources.
These positive changes have been somewhat offset by a dramatic uptick of certain other resources. Medical equipment, sanitation products, and even toilet paper are in short supply–and even more concerning, so are the medical personnel and hospital beds. And I’m guessing that as a world population, we’re generating a lot more waste and reusing a lot less.
In our own two-person, one-cat house, we’ve shifted some things as well. Our new routines might provide useful examples of how to be protected while staying as green as practical, so I’ll share a few of the details.
Water Use
What with not only washing our hands constantly for a full 20 seconds but taking a new glass or spoon every time and throwing our clothes in the washing machine every time we go to the store, our water use is probably triple what it was. We used to run the dishwasher about two, maybe three times in a typical week; now it’s more like five or six.
But even when we’re washing our hands so many times per day, we don’t turn the water on full force, and we turn it off when we’re not actually rubbing our hands under the faucet. We use just enough water to do a good job.
Fortunately, our heat and hot water are both on a green system powered by residual heat from cow poop and food waste running through our farmer neighbors’ methane digesters, and we live in an area where water is not scarce.
Cleaning Supplies
We’re also using somewhat more disposable paper products–but not all that much. For years, we’ve tended to use rags rather than paper towels to clean surfaces or mop up spills. But we are using paper towels or wipes to do things like keep our hands from touching door handles going into or out of a public place, wiping down shopping carts, etc. And of course, disinfecting the packaging we buy is something we never did before, and that uses a few paper towels.
My wife made us each a reusable mask. Since we’re usually shopping no more than once a week, it’s easy to wash them between uses.
We are not stockpiling, and we think the idea is silly. We’ve always bought toilet paper in 12-roll packs, and when we’re about half through, we get another 12-pack. When our bottle of dish soap gets down to half, we buy one more bottle. These patterns have not changed.
We are using more laundry detergent. Normally, we use a reusable laundry ball in the washing machine. We still do for regular wash, but for those post-shopping loads, we use hot or warm water, which the laundry ball isn’t designed for. We are almost through the box of earth-friendly detergent we bought about four years ago, but when that’s done, we inherited a huge tub of Arm & Hammer natural laundry powder when my stepfather died in 2018. I expect that it will last us the rest of our lives, considering we mostly use the laundry ball.
Packaging
As green consumers, we don’t bring a huge amount of packaged food into the house to begin with, and we save reusable glass and plastic containers when we do. We actually choose our brands of yogurt and hummus in part by whether we can put the containers and lids through the dishwasher and reuse them–and we use them until they break, usually at least 20 times. (We also factor in taste, quality, and price, of course.) Since forever, we use those jars to store bulk beans and grains, spices, and flours. Now, if we buy boxed cereal, for example, we wipe down the box and then either take the inner liner out and put it in a box we just finished, or put the cereal in jars.
When we buy bread or loose produce, we remove it from the plastic bag it came from and put it in one we’ve had pre-crisis; we have an entire hamper full of them. Cans get washed down with disinfectant, but other than cat food (which we buy in cases so the cans are protected), a small amount of canned beans, and coconut milk, we used almost no canned products anyway.
Since we’re not driving much, we have the luxury of leaving non-perishables in the car for a few days to decontaminate on their own–and while we still disinfect when we bring them in, we’re not quite as hyper-vigilant
Most of our produce is harvested at or near our home by the CSA farm we belong to, farmers at the local farmers markets and farm stands, or in our own garden. We’re washing everything more carefully. We’re washing citrus with soap. We’re peeling items like salad carrots instead of just grating the peels in with the rest of the carrot–but leaving peels on for cooked foods when appropriate, since heat kills the virus.
For years, we’ve kept reusable totebags in the car and brought them with us into stores. Now, we leave them in the car, load everything back into the shopping cart, unbagged, after it’s scanned, and then load them into our own bags at the car. So we’re still not getting bags, for the most part. This does mean we avoid shopping on bad-weather days.
Transportation and Shopping Choices
We live out in the country, seven miles from town. We’ve always ganged our errands into as few trips as practical, but now we’ve become almost religious about it. Going through the decontamination process every time we go shopping is annoying enough that we’re trying to shop no more than weekly, and preferably every two weeks. When we go, we think about everything we might need for 14 days, where we can get it with the fewest stops (rather than the lowest prices), and what route minimizes the miles to visit those stores.
One of the greenest things to do at this time is to actively support local independent businesses. We’ve shifted a much bigger percentage of our shopping dollars to the businesses we want to make sure survive, the ones that make our community a desirable place to live. We’re also ordering more online from these local businesses, and either picking up curbside or getting things shipped.
And sadly, we can’t car pool anymore. When we meet our friend who lives a mile from us to hike together (10 feet apart), she and we arrive in separate cars.
I haven’t needed any clothing except a package of socks I ordered online and picked up curbside. I would probably not go to a used clothing store right now, because it could be a germ factory. But I did arrange no-contact pickups for some books someone was giving away on our local Buy Nothing community, and for some items I had to offer. I let the books sit in the car and I will wipe them down before I shelve them.
Like everyone else, I’ve been a bit grumpy (and a lot horrified) as the world shuts down to slow the spread of the killer virus COVID-19. But I also find myself being grateful for some of the changes.
Grumps (things I miss a lot)
Hugs (I still get them with my beloved spouse, thankfully)
Gathering with friends in person
Travel
Potlucks
Restaurants
US military photo of the COVID-19 novel coronavirus.
Gratitudes (places where I see improvement)
Gatherings of widely dispersed friends and family over Zoom (tonight, we’re hosting a Passover Seder with participants in seven US states)
Still finding ways to make new friends–like the Sustainability Director for a major US city who became my friend after we were in the same breakout room in a Zoom webinar (and who then had me present to her daughter’s online learning group of high school kids)
An explosion of “compassionate creativity,” from the Italians singing on their balconies to the outpouring of live and recorded concerts, Broadway shows, and more, to the business owners who still pay their idled staff
The people who are using this situation to examine where our society could be improved both now and even long after the crisis ends: developing new approaches in addressing the carbon/climate crisis, education, transportation, health care, bringing people out of poverty, and more
Watching people rediscover nature (all the hiking and biking trails near me are getting heavy use) and realize that there’s more to life than looking at screens all the time
While-you-wait résumés over Zoom and free résumé critiques by email—and if you’re unemployed because of the virus, your first cover letter is a gift when you get your résumé written (this is an offer from me personally)
What are your highlights in this time? Please post in the comments.
Sniffing at the others who care is a form of virtue signalling. It’s also an ineffective way to create real change.
“My Prius Hybrid gets 140 miles per gallon.”
“My Tesla is solar powered.”
“Really, well I take an electric scooter.”
“We carpool by sharing a horse.”
“A horse? You should walk!”
This misses the real problem: The 1998 Chevy Suburban, with just one person on board, doing a forty-mile commute at 12 miles per gallon.
The same goes for ranking elected officials on who is the most perfect on the issue we care about.
The people who are paying attention are the ones who are trying. And shaming people who are trying because they’re not perfect is a terrific way to discourage them from trying. On the other hand, the core of every system is filled with the status quo, a status quo that isn’t even paying attention.
Focusing the group’s energy on shutting down stripped-mine coal is going to make far more impact than scolding the few who are trying.
We always hear from conservatives that they don’t see how we can possibly afford universal health care, let alone the Green New Deal. Thus, as a public service, I’m listing five ways (among dozens if not hundreds) we can locate the funds. This is not even pretending to be comprehensive (or in any sort of order), and I’d love you to add your favorite in the comments.
Eliminate the private for-profit insurance system, which jacks up the price. According to The New Republic (2015), this is costing us between $375 billion and $471 billion per year. The savings in getting rid of the middlemen would more than cover the increase in taxes.
Cap doctors’ salaries at something reasonable and generous. I’ll pull a figure out of the air: 200K per year for generalists, 300K for specialists—but it could be higher or lower.
Eliminate the crazy subsidies and price protections in so many industries, and particularly fossil and nuclear fuel, Big Pharma, highways and bridges to nowhere, and chemiculture-based Big Ag. We are subsidizing all sorts of things that should not be subsidized! Our policies should support the changes we want society to make (but right now, our policies interfere with those changes.
Cut the military budget down to the expenditure of China (the country second on the list). Right now, the US is spending an obscene $649 billion per year (2016) to “defend” 329,345,285 people (more than the next seven countries combined). Yet China manages to protect 1,420,615,635 people, more than 4.3 times the US figure, with military spending of just $146 billion (2016), or less than a quarter overall, less than a sixteenth per capita. So if the US slashed military spending by 75 percent to match China’s, it would still be spending more than four times per person than China does. Surely that would be enough to protect ourselves!
So next time you meet someone who wonders how to pay for the world we want, this article gives part of the recipe. Readers, please add your own favorite ways to find the money for these improvements, and please include a source for your data.
Surely, we can build a better future with technology instead of focusing on autonomous drone delivery of a latte 9 blocks away in San Francisco.
—Seth Godin, December 31, 2018
On New Year’s Eve, Seth Godin riffed on an ambitious list of 23 problems we can focus on solving. A few of my favorites:
Seth Godin. Photo by Jill Greenberg. Courtesy of Seth Godin.
1. High efficiency, sustainable method for growing sufficient food, including market-shifting replacements for animals as food 2. High efficiency, renewable energy sources and useful batteries (cost, weight, efficiency) 8. Useful methods for enhancing, scaling or replacing primary education, particularly literacy 12. Gene therapies for obesity, cancer and chronic degenerative diseases 13. Dramatic leaps of AI interactions with humans 14. Alternatives to paid labor for most humans 15. Successful interactions with intelligent species off Earth 17. Cultural and nation-state conflict resolution and de-escalation 18. Dramatically new artistic methods for expression
Seth’s list fascinates me because it uses technology as a jumping-off point to solve social problems. Most of us don’t think of technology that way; too often, we think of technology only in terms of lifestyle issues (I don’t even want to label them as problems). Go back to the quote at the very top of this post to see what Seth says about that!
I’m one who does think of technology this way. I’ve written frequently about using technology to turn hunger and poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change into abundance, peace, and planetary balance.
And like Seth, I think we actually can solve these huge problems. As he writes,
[This list seems ridiculous until you realize that in the last few generations, we created vaccines, antibiotics, smartphones, GPS and the Furby].
Not to mention viable solar power, conflict resolution based on deep listening, the ability to access the world’s entire written or pictorial knowledge base from devices the size of a watch, a vast increase in the quantity and quality of organic food…
So I let Seth’s list percolate in the back of my brain for a week.
Here are a few I’d add:
Peace: no more armed conflict as a way to settle grievances, anywhere—and this means diplomats must be trained deeply in nonviolence theory and practice, using not just academic but also empirical hands-on problem-solving and creative thinking
Nonviolent, respectful conflict resolution taught from preschool through college as a required subject, and reinforced through adulthood in the media, the court system, and government—among other things, that means no longer glorifying actual or threatened violence or presenting it as a way to solve problems in film, TV, or literature
New tools for genuine democracy: governments at all levels from village to planet that work for the benefit of their entire population while minimizing any restrictions on personal freedom to act in any ways that don’t harm others, that are based not in who pays the candidates the most but in how each government unit can benefit its population (including the non-humans) and the ecosystem (macro and micro)—this also means ensuring that votes are free and fair, honestly and accurately counted, and allow all citizens to participate
Two-way or multiple-way communication with many plant as well as animal species—maybe even with bacteria—not just by a few outliers, but as other languages people could study
At least 50 percent urban community food self-sufficiency: even our most paved-over spaces, like New York City, should be able to supply 50 percent or more of their own food, using rooftops, windowsills, traffic islands, public green spaces, etc. (This will require cleaning up pollution using plant-based filtration, first—and ending sources of ongoing pollution from fossil-fuel-powered vehicles, buildings, and powerplants)
Complete conversion to clean, renewable, non-fossil, non-nuclear power sources within five years for new construction or manufacture, and fifteen years to phase in the conversion of existing buildings and vehicles
Elimination of all forms of slavery, including not just sex trafficking (Seth’s #3), but also sweatshops, child slaves picking cocoa beans in Africa, prison labor at far below minimum wage…
Speaking of prison—isn’t it time we had more humane ways of dealing with criminals and sociopaths?
Exploration of space in ways that honor the ecosystems, not to rape and plunder their resources but to expand our knowledge, develop laboratories for alternative ways to design a society, and perhaps find other intelligent life forms we can communicate with and learn from, as Seth notes in his #15 and #23
And because not everything has to be so ambitious and grandiose, making email useful again. Figuring out a way to eliminate spam while letting legitimate messages through, even if people write about subjects like marketing or cancer of a the mammary system using the b-word, but keeping the real junk out. That’s actually pretty ambitious, because the only way it’s likely to get done is with a huge leap in artificial intelligence technology—in other words, this is one application of Seth’s #13.
Like Seth, I’ll ask, “What’s on your list?” Please leave a comment whether it’s your top few or a longer list. If comments are closed (which they do automatically after a certain time), write to me at my contact form, https://greenandprofitable.com/contact/, and use the subject, Blog Comment: Seth’s List. I’ll get them posted here.
Guest Post by Wayne Stevenson Thomas, in San Antonio, Texas
[Editor’s note: We stayed with Wayne on our first trip to San Antonio many years ago, and have stayed in contact. I am always looking for examples of for-profit businesses that serve a greater good. If you’ve got an example and would like to guest-blog, please write to me through this site.]
Thrift Shop Interior
Cliff Morgan was an executive at the local St. Vincent de Paul. They had a big operation of recycling the items they couldn’t sell or give to the poor. But he and the St. Vincent board found that the not-for-profit model didn’t allow him the flexibility he needed to operate. (Something about how all contracts or agreements had to go to the board as well as any expenditures above a fairly low number.)
So St. Vincent decided to spin off the operation into a for-profit, which Cliff owns. SA3 Community Recycling serves three communities of interest: Nonprofits who receive donations they cannot use, nonprofits who need items, and citizens (as represented by our governmental organizations).
He collects unneeded items from providing nonprofits. He pays them for clothing, shoes and bundled cardboard, generating a small revenue stream for them while allowing them to concentrate on their mission, rather than on disposing or selling unwanted material.
He contacts receiver nonprofits to provide them exactly the items they need from the stream of items he receives from the provider nonprofits. He provides exactly what they need. For instance, Dress for Success might need 5 size 16 Women’s business suits. SA3 would pull exactly that out of their stream and no more.
For the citizens as a whole, he contracts with governmental organizations to keep items out of the landfill. For instance he accepts cathode ray tube TVs from the providing nonprofits and disassembles them. He does the same with other electronics (if he doesn’t have another nonprofit that can use them.)
He generates income (as I understand it) by selling the clothing and cardboard for a bit more than he pays for it, and by selling the metal and other material captured from the electronics. He pays his staff, who do the pick-ups and supervise the volunteers who help sort the items that come through the door.
Among the nonprofits he provides with items from his stream are: Habitat for Humanity (building material), the Diaper Bank (loose and packaged diapers), Dress for Success, Spare Parts (an arts nonprofit that provides used and repurposed items to local art educators) and Samministries (household items for families leaving shelters). He also provides items as needed to several St. Vincent operations in South Texas. I believe he sincerely wants to recycle as much as he can within the community (and have connected him with several other receiver organizations).
Wayne Stevenson Thomas is a former volunteer and assistant manager at Jefferson Thrift Store in San Antonio.
I read Seth Godin’s daily blog almost daily but I missed this one from a couple of days ago. I think he’s absolutely right. Kids need time in nature, to daydream, to make friends, and do things that don’t involve a screen.
And they need to develop independence. It’s a myth that you can protect your kid from all bad or even uncomfortable things. And some discomfort is necessary to growth. Otherwise, when they do hit a challenge, they are completely unable to cope. I believe in parenting that presents gradual increases in challenges. That doesn’t mean forcing kids to do things where they have zero interest or skill, but helping them find the places where growth is exciting, and helping them get through the uncomfortable incidents in their lives–but not by attempting to seal them off in a vacuum tube somewhere.
Then there’s the effect on our biology. I know from paying careful attention to my own body that I’m most comfortable if my on-screen shifts are an hour or less. Research confirms that prolonged computer use creates health problems (one of 369,000,000 results for “health effects of computer use”, BTW).
Electronic babysitters are not really new, just intensified. In my day, many of my peers were shuttled off to the family television, nicknamed, for good reason, the “boob tube.” Mainstream TV in the 1960s, and especially kid programming in the pre-Sesame Street, pre-Mr. Rogers days, sabotaged intelligence and reinforced a culture of violence. Even the years-later and scrupulously politically correct Barney worked really hard to dumb things down, and that was public TV–while Sesame Street, although a terrific show, changed our thought patterns and shortened our attention spans by chopping up several stories into little pieces and scattering them throughout the show.
Luckily, my mom believed in limiting TV. We were allowed two hours a day, after completing our homework, and nothing too violent. I am very grateful to her for this rule, and to my first grade teacher who recognized that Sally, Dick, and Jane bored me–I was reading at age three–and sat me down in the back of the room with a 4th-grade geography book. Under these two influences, I became an avid reader. From then on, any time I felt bored, I could escape into a book. I discovered a world of ideas (and their potential to create a more just, eco-friendly world) in biography, science, and “think” books…alternate worlds in science fiction…wonderful characters in literary fiction…deductive reasoning combining with intuitive leaps in detective novels. I always say I became a writer because I’m interested in everything–but being a reader created that interest. Oh, and I still find geography fascinating.
My interest in reading predates school. I still remember being frustrated because the New York Public Library wouldn’t let me get a library card until I could write my name, which only happened two or three years after I was reading. My mom had to use some of her precious allotment to keep me in reading material. Years later, when NYPL lifted the 6-books-at-a-time limit, my mom would take a shopping cart over to her branch, fill it up, read the books on her 3 hours of bus commuting per day, and trade them in two weeks later for another batch. I started tracking the number of books I’m reading a few years ago, and it’s ranged from 83 to 88 per year. This year, it will probably be more like 75, because an all-consuming family situation cut deeply into my reading time this fall. It’s at 71 as of today. And reading is eco-friendly and frugal (thank you, public libraries and friends with interesting books), too.
We read Charlotte’s Web to our daughter when she was four. At seven, it was the first full-length chapter book she read on her own. A few years later, she got to play Charlotte in a local theater production. In college, she did a long academic paper on the deeper philosophical implications of
Thomas Edison took 10,000 steps to invent a lightbulb. Could your child be so patiently focused on a task?
Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. Now she’s about to get a master’s degree in teaching adult literacy.
Today, at least, screen time is much more interactive. Instead of sitting passively, kids create scenarios and alternative endings, share their discoveries on social media, etc. But they do it in nanobits.
But in today’s electronic world, I worry about attention span, focus, creativity–and empathy; I see a rapidly growing culture of intolerance (125,000,000 results on Google for “social media bullying”). In a world with no attention span, how can we make the next lightbulb discovery? Edison himself described inventing the lightbulb as a 10,000-step process. Nanobits don’t lead down that torturous path. Reading, meanwhile, reinforces attention span, focus, and creativity. Whether it narrows or widens your horizons depends on what you choose to read.
And reading can also be interactive, because you create your own storylines and then read further to see if you’re right.
What if your kid has learning disabilities or other issues that make reading difficult? Try audiobooks, or make the time to read aloud, or bring the books down a couple of grade levels until your child is ready for more. Or substitute other equally creative activities, from one-sentence-per-person storytelling to counting how many ideas you can get on a stroll through a forest. Even kids who love to read can benefit by broadening their creative repertoire.
