In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

For my birthday on last Saturday, my kids got me a 33oz. “I AM NOT PLASTIC” water bottle. I bring this up not because I love my kids (which I do) or because I want to contribute to slowing global warming (which I do). But instead because the gift offers me another good lesson about emergency preparedness.

I recently wrote about what the public efforts on global warming can teach us about action on emergency preparedness. This is another example.

One of my daughter’s teachers brought the ”I AM NOT PLASTIC BOTTLE” one day and suggested that the kids ask their parents about it. The bottle is described on the the Sigg website:

With 2.5 million plastic water bottles being thrown out every hour in the United States, StopGlobalWarming.org is proud to partner with SIGG to create a re-usable water bottle so we can all do our part and ditch the plastic!

My kids wanted me to reduce my contribution to that large number, which led to my birthday present. 

The fact is that if you want to change adult behavior, a very effective (if sneaky) way of doing so is through their kids. A similar dynamic occurred last year when my younger daughter came home from school asking whether we were going to “save the environment” by getting new compact fluorescent bulbs. And that sent me to the hardware store faster than any public service announcement. The bottom line to me is that we are not going to change social behavior on emergency preparedness unless we get kids more involved in it.