We give our children a small weekly allowance because we want them to learn some valuable lessons about money. Corporations provide them with goods and services, but they aren’t all that interested in teaching my children valuable lessons.
We do impose some limits on what our kids buy for a number of reasons such as safety and nutrition, but we try not to be so strict as to diminish the idea that the money is for their discretionary spending. They listen to me give a speech every time they come in the house with a plastic soft drink bottle. I am an accomplished public speaker, but they seem to see this as negative reinforcement nonetheless. They opt for glass bottles or cans more often than not.
Other than the plastic bottles, I mostly let things slide. There are a few things that bother me.
Kinder Surprises are my enemy #1 when it comes to junk food. Thankfully, my kids have outgrown them. Kinder makes a candy bar without the surprise. It comes in a plastic wrapper inside which there are two fingers of candy in their own individual plastic wrappers.
Individual serving cakes are another pet peeve. My teenage son considers one cake to be 1/2 a serving.
The brand name imported candy bars are bad value and they probably have a bigger environmental cost than the locally manufactured treats.
Giving the kids and allowance and having them be less environmentally responsible than me is a situation that I am going to just live with. If I felt like something had to be done, there are a few options.
I could spend some of my own money to stock the cupboards with fair trade organic chocolate bars in foil wrappers, home baked cakes and soft drinks in returnable bottles. I don’t know what the kids would buy if all their sugar cravings were being met in house.
I already make a point of providing a big cooked breakfast on a regular basis. French toast made from local bread and eggs comes plastic free. I make a topping from local seasonal fruit cooked in a pan with sugar that I buy by the kg without packaging. Sending the kids to school stuffed to the gills with carbs and protein might prevent the purchase of a few items of plastic packaged junk food.
A simple option to reduce the environmental impact of my kids’ allowance would be to reduce or eliminate the allowance itself. This would be a microcosm of what some people were saying about the economic crisis when it hit. Having less money to spend should always translate to less waste.
A very difficult option would be to dictate what the kids could and could not purchase. This would make allowance pointless. It wouldn’t make me very popular either.
