The Green Suburbanite

It's almost summer, and that means for many eager parents and their children it's graduation time. A time for family and friends to shower that student with love, congratulations, and more importantly for the students, with gifts.

Many families have raised their children in homes where environmental values are instilled from an early age. In other cases, it's the child, now a feisty and optimistic young adult, who has tried to lead the green life despite the parents' traditional values. Either way, it's important to encourage these newly independent people to keep their environmental values at the forefront as they make their way to college and beyond. What better way to help keep them on the green living path than with some green graduation gifts? Here are some tips.

• Gift cards for green retailers. Your graduate will no doubt need some new threads. Online stores like Patagonia and Nau offer up everything from organic cotton pants and shirts to jackets made out of recycled soda bottles. Treehugger.com offers up a ton of suggestions for green clothes and retailers. Even stores like The Gap are getting in on the act with new organic cotton t-shirts.

• Gift cards for organic food. These days organic food stores are everywhere. A reloadable gift card for a nationwide grocery store like Whole Foods or Trader Joe's will keep your student in healthy, fresh food for a month or even a semester. You could even get a gift card for a local organic restaurant. (Trader Joe's also has a bounty of tasty, healthy microwaveable food, perfect for quick dorm dinners - you can buy online, but check the availability of a store near your student's college home). To go along with those green groceries, pick up some reuseable canvas bags to carry all that good food back to the dorm.

• Coffee. If there's one thing every student seems to need, it's coffee. Today most major coffee importers and chains (like Starbucks, Caribou, Seattle's Best) have Fair Trade brands, which ensure fair wages for workers. Look for other marks of environmental coffee practices - Shade Grown, Organic, Bird-Friendly. Peace Coffee (www.peacecoffee.com) roasts excellent coffee, and they'll deliver anywhere.

• Chocolate. Second only to coffee, chocolate is at the top of the college brain-food list. Chocolate comes in Fair Trade and Organic varieties, and chocolate bars that are high in dark chocolate content are full of healthy antioxidants, not to mention delicious.

• Compact fluorescent lightbulbs. While CFLs are more expensive initially, they are energy-efficient and long lasting. Replacing a single incandescent bulb with a CFL will save about 300 pounds of coal. And each bulb will probably last longer than your child's four years at school.

• Laundry detergent. Parents seem to always send their kids off to school with a lifetime supply of detergent. Go for detergents that are biodegradable and nontoxic. Brands like Seventh Generation and Shaklee are great and well-priced.

• Shampoos and soaps. More and more bath products are coming in green varieties. Aveda and The Body Shop are leaders in this movement, producing natural products that are good for the planet and good for the body.

• Online music and digital music players. Give your grad a digital music player, like the Apple iPod or Creative Zen, and a gift card for an online music store, like iTunes or eMusic. A lot of waste comes from making, shipping, and playing CDs. Digital music, on the other hand, transfers electronically from record company to music store to digital music player. As a bonus, your grad will think you're so cool.

• A green computer. A computer is essential for college living and working these days. Why not make it green? The Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool is a certification program for computers and other electronics. Check our the EPEAT's standards and computers that make the grade at www.epeat.net. Pick up some recycled printer paper to go with that green computer.

• Give a gift in your grad's name to a charitable organization. Heifer International (www.heifer.org) is a fun one. The money donated is used to buy livestock and other needed goods for families and communities in developing nations. For example, a $20 gift gives a family a flock of chicks, $60 gives a trio of rabbits, $120 gives a goat or a sheep, and $500 gives a whole cow.

• Start a retirement account with eco-friendly mutual funds. To help you child prepare for his or her future, start up an IRA in their name with shares of socially responsible stocks and mutual funds. Learn more at www.socialfunds.com.

• Green travel. Many grads want to do some traveling before they get back to the grind in college. Instead of just shipping them off to Europe for a month, talk to them about eco-tourism. Eco-tourism takes many forms: traveling to a developing nation and helping build homes or a school for the summer; visiting a faraway nature preserve and learning about the species there and the people who manage it; hiking or biking instead of taking the train or a car to travel; interacting and even living with locals, as opposed to seeing only other travelers and living in big, Americanized hotels. Check out Sustainable Travel International (www.sustainabletravelinternational.org) for more ideas.

• Some parents can go all-out and get a new car for their grad. Consider a new or used hybrid, or a small car that gets very high mileage.