Green Scene Blog - National Geographic Kids

Every fall, beautiful red, yellow, and orange leaves become a big outdoor clean up project for many families. Rakes, leaf blowers, tarps, plastic bags, and brown paper kraft bags are the tools of the trade for leaf warriors. Depending on how many deciduous trees you have in your neighborhood, raking, piling, bagging, and dragging leaves can take hours!

Composting yard waste saves space in landfills and can help reduce overall methane gas produced in landfills. Many local governments require that leaves be picked up as yard waste by trash disposal companies. The leaves are taken to a facility and are turned into mulch along with other yard debris, like grass clippings, small sticks and branches.

If you have room in a corner of your yard, pile the leaves and leave them there for a couple of years! Over time, the pile will become compact and you'll have leaf mold, which can provide nutrients to the soil in your garden.

Do you help your family or neighbors with yard clean up? Do you stuff your leaves into plastic bags or do you use brown paper kraft bags as they do in Canada? Or do you haul your leaves to the curb to wait for the big vacuum truck to suck them up on recycle day?

Get some tips from the EPA's Create Your Own Compost Pile.

Photograph by Photo Library

Get creative and make your own costumes. Cat Up a Tree, Spaghetti and Meatballs, and Aquarium costumes can be made for less than $20.

Participate in a costume swap with friends or other families in your neighborhood. See if your friends have some costumes they don't want to use this year.

Avoid Halloween-store makeup kits. Use real eco-friendly makeup that mom can use long after the holiday is over. Zinc oxide is a great option to use in place of white face paint and can be used as the base for a number of costume make-up ideas. Brown, green, grey and blue eyeshadows, and dark eyeliner can be used to create ghastly-looking scars and bruises.

Encourage your family to hand out candy made with organic sugar or fair trade chocolate. Natural foods stores will often carry individually wrapped candies including lollipops, chocolates, and toffee. And it's still sweet enough to not get tricked for handing it out.

Decorate a pillowcase or reusable canvas shopping bag to carry the trick-or-treating haul. Don't buy a new plastic pumpkin this year, go old-school and decorate a pillowcase or canvas shopping bag.

Photograph by Stefano Paltera/U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon

Team Germany won the Solar Decathlon contest to create a house that uses solar power to supply energy for everything in the house, from the computer to the TV. Architecture and  engineering students from around the world competed in the decathlon. The winning house, built of solar panels and colorful acrylic panels the team called "sun freckles," was one of 20 designs that were set up on the Mall in Washington, D.C. for the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon.

Watch a video and see the winning house on National Geographic News!

Would you want to design a solar house?
 

Have you ever been to a swap meet? Swaps are a great way to conserve resources because instead of tossing out items that you don't need anymore, you can exchange them for items that you want or need.

How Swaps Work

Go through your belongings and find items that you don't use anymore. Be sure your parents aren't planning to pass them down to a younger sibling!

Pick a date to have a swap party at your house, church, or school. Double check these dates with your parents, teacher, principal, or church leader to find out what works for them.

Pick a theme! You can have a winter swap to swap winter coats and boots, winter sports gear such as ice/hockey skates, sleds, or even snowboards and skis. Or you can have a summer swap to exchange rafts, snorkeling gear, camping equipment, kayaks, and boogie boards.

Or you can set up a swap based on the items your are swapping. Books, DVDs, CDs, video games, and toy swaps are great way to get some new media to keep you busy.

Costume swaps and clothes swaps help you to exchange items that are too small for you for something that fits! Maybe you can plan a Halloween costume swap.

Ask people to bring only those items that actually work and are clean.

Donate any leftover items to charity.

Watch the video of frogfish swimming near Cocos Island.
 



Easily mistaken for a sponge when standing still, this frogfish--a favorite of the Ocean Now expedition team--waddles the seafloor beneath Chatham Bay off Costa Rica's Cocos Island. Learn more about Cocos and see more of the frogfish at ocean.nationalgeographic.com.