Generation Green
The Ultimate Teen Guide to Living an Eco-Friendly Life
you are generation green!
When I was a kid, I didn't know that we were more environmentally conscious -- greener -- than my friends' families. I just thought everybody lived like we did, and there weren't a whole lot of other people around to tell me otherwise. From age four until I was nine my parents raised me in the woods in northern New Mexico, where we lived on hundreds of acres of raw land. My folks built our house themselves, which was 100 percent solar-powered. (Mom even juiced her laptop from the sun.) We lived "off the grid," meaning we weren't connected to the electrical system or public utilities. We didn't need an alarm clock; we just went to sleep after it got dark and woke up with the sun. It was so far away from everything that friends always got lost trying to find us down the maze of dirt roads. I loved it, even though we had so few of the things most kids take for granted -- working toilets, indoor heating, phones, trash pickup, a dishwasher. If we wanted water, we couldn't just turn on a faucet; we had to catch it ... read full excerpt from: Generation Green: The Ultimate Teen Guide to Living an Eco-Friendly ebook